


Into The Night

by okoriwadsworth



Series: Strange Times [2]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), 忍者龍剣伝 | Ninja Gaiden (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:56:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 38,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24998689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okoriwadsworth/pseuds/okoriwadsworth
Summary: After the Battle of the Glades is done, the future Green Arrow and Black Canary face enemies thought gone, wars they never expected to have to fight, and come to grips with the notion they have to fight as something outside of the League of Assassins.
Relationships: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen, Nyssa al Ghul/Sara Lance
Series: Strange Times [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1809745
Comments: 48
Kudos: 13





	1. Burials

Danger is as close to a normal thing as anything when you do the sort of work the Al-Sahim and Al-Kanari do. And after the Battle of the Glades, when their home was in ruins and bodies were laid around the McMillan Projects, it did feel at first like normal. But then the aftertaste of what they had done, and this one burned like white-hot lava coming back up. They, two students still not wholly educated in the League of Assassins’ ways, had delivered a vital blow to the Black Spider Clan’s operations. They had also arrived in their home unmasked. This meant that their family, the people they had thought they never would see again, now knew they lived and would demand to see them. Despite this, the city had suffered a loss. The police scanners that the League had indicated the police, and EMS that had been called in from the tri-state area, were still pulling bodies from the wreckage.

And then Nyssa received a communication, not through falconry as was their normal way but through a phone call while they were making their way back to the safehouse, their masks and hoods back on fully. So they weren’t seeing anything wrong with Nyssa’s face, because they couldn’t see her face at all. And then, her body quaked and they knew. They just KNEW.

It had to have been Slade. He had demanded to be, as he put it with his usual gruffness, a “rear echelon motherfucker” while the rest of the League went to settle up with Talia, Merlyn, and Genshin. They had to retrieve his body, and handle his death in their formal ways. Above everything else, this had to be handled with grace, lest the Black Spider Clan decide now to be a good time to gain revenge for Genshin’s fall.

But what they didn’t know, **_couldn’t_** know, was that the Black Spider Clan had never left town. Some of their highest-ranking members had been kept out of the fight for precisely this outcome. And now that they knew they were needed, they struck with vengeance and cold fury.

**_At the Black Spider Clan safehouse in Bludhaven………_ **

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Kushimaro was angry, concerned, and more than a touch terrified. The notion that the whelp pretending to be the guardian of the Dragon Lineage could have gotten the better of his master, and friend, Genshin was something he could not abide in any meaningful way. But honestly, and this he spoke of only to his wives and concubines, his association with Talia Al Ghul had always worried Kushimaro.

He understood why Genshin had wanted to do it, of course. All of them who were in on the decision got the reasoning behind it. Genshin was trying to keep the clan’s mission and power base strong in a time where HIVE, and the Ninth Circle exist. Suffice it to say that there were plenty of organizations eager to do evil, and battle against a League of Assassins that had sworn to uphold the balance and live to do justice that others could not.

But, and this was the part where he was concerned, there were **_EXPECTATIONS_** the Black Spider Clan had always had for its leader. And right now, the power vacuum meant that there was a real chance none of them were going to be followed for the first times since the clan’s formation. In order to be its leader, the ichizoku no shihaisha, one had to be three things in addition to a master swordsman, excellent strategist, and ruthless beyond all others.

First, and perhaps most important, was that you had to be full-blooded Japanese. Lord knows there had been enough ninja guilds like this where one leader was half-Chinese, or half-Korean, or whatever else, and the gods responded by breaking the clan apart. Genshin did not want that for his order, did not want to see the work that they had done since the clan’s very formation be broken apart by something as simple as this.

Also, you had to be a member of the Kumohara clan. Shinsuke Kumohara and his brother, Hideo, had formed the clan in the wake of the destruction of the Tokugawa shogunate. And ever since that time, whoever it was that was the head of the clan could trace their lineage back to those 2.

And finally, they had to swear a blood oath to battle the Hayabusa clan, and seek to exterminate the Dragon Lineage wholly. This, honestly, was the whole point of the organization.

Talia Al Ghul had done, or could not do, any of these things. And yet, as it now stood, he was the only one standing between her and complete control of a ninja order he had served since he was old enough to fight.

But Kushimaro knew something else. He could not go into the field anymore. Years of battle had weakened his legs to the point where he could not move with the grace, and skill, someone in his position needed to possess. He had been lucky, luckier than he deserved, that his close friend Genshin saw him for the skilled planner, networker, and keeper of secrets that he was. Because now, in this moment, he realized what he had spent all the years seeing Talia Al Ghul garner more and more influence trying to deny: His time at the head of the Black Spider Clan was shorter than he wished.

Right then, clarity hit. He was able to read the changing tides around him, and knew that Talia had slowly been replacing his loyalists with people who were willing to do what she was. And he could not live with the notion that the Black Spider Clan would not serve the same masters it always had. So, in his final acts as the lieutenant of the Black Spider Clan, Kushimaro hatched one more multi-faceted plot. First, he instructed one of his aides de camp to put together a secretive note, not on the clan’s usual stationery, and send it off to the Hayabusa village so that Ryu, and whoever else was in his camp, knew what they were up against now. Secondly, he burned all of his notebooks which held all of the spells Talia, or anyone for that matter, could use to revive those who were dead. He was no fool. As long as that magic existed, he knew she would want to revive those who could serve her mission. But he could not, would not, make her work easier.

With that done, he grabbed a small short sword, said a final prayer to the gods who had guided his way and an apology to Genshin, and committed suicide right there. The traps he laid, the things he set in motion, would change his beloved clan forever.

**_Meanwhile, back in Starling City….._ **

\---------------------------------------------------------------------

“Forgive and have mercy upon him. Excuse him and pardon him. Make honorable his reception. Protect him from the punishment of the grave, and the torment of the fire.”

These were not words Nyssa Al-Ghul relished saying, or that Al-Kanari and Al-Sahim relished hearing. But they knew, to the very depths of their souls, that Al-Dhiyb had earned this honor many times over. And so, here they stood in Starling City’s potter’s field. While they knew they would have wanted to bury him back in Australia, where he could be surrounded by his loved ones and family, this was the best way. None of them could be sure that Talia didn’t want to use a Lazarus pit, or some other necromantic ritual, to raise him from the dead. And because that was the case, they’d have to bury him here. So no one would know that Slade Wilson, 2-time winner of the Victoria Cross of Australia for gallantry and one of the finest men and warriors that they had ever known, had died. That was how it had to be, for the world’s safety.

But precisely none of them liked it. They wanted to honor him properly, not bury him in an unmarked grave with no ceremony other than a rapidly-whispered League of Assassins prayer. It felt dirty and cheap, far beneath the man and the warrior he was.

Once that was done, then, Al-Sahim and Al-Kanari prepared to leave and return back to Nanda Parbat. But Nyssa Al-Ghul had one more task for them.

**_At the Queen Mansion……._ **

\------------------------------------------------------

When she had heard it, Moira Queen could scarcely believe it. First, she had mourned her only son who she thought dead in a boat crash. Now she is told that their close family friend Malcolm Merlyn was behind the crash, and that he planned on destroying the entirety of the Glades with the aid of something called “The Black Spider Clan”. Then, if that wasn’t enough, it turns out Oliver was alive and had been conscripted, along with Laurel, into an ancient order called the League of Assassins. If not for the fact that it all sounded plausible, she would have wondered if she had too much wine with the chicken cordon bleu Raisa had made earlier that night.

But, surrounded as she was by her baby girl Thea, Dinah Lance, and Sara Lance, she realized it had to be true. And in something else she wouldn’t have been able to admit out loud, she was looking forward to seeing them.

So, when the door yawns open and three hooded people walked into the foyer, she knew right away which one of them was her son. Even if she was blindfolded, she could always tell whenever Oliver was in the room. There was a light that emanated from him, a feeling of goodness and innocence, that she always treasured. And so, without even considering it for a second, she ran at her boy and hugged him as tight as she could.

The floodgates opened after that. Thea joined in on the hug too, and Dinah and Sara hugged Laurel.

But that affection only lasted for a little while. Work has to be done.


	2. Sleep Now In The Fire

Sleep Now in The Fire

**_At the Queen Mansion…._ **

\---------------------------------------------------

As Moira Queen, Dinah Drake-Lance, Thea Queen, Sara Lance, Nyssa Al-Ghul, Oliver Queen, and Dinah Laurel Lance all sat around a dining room table, eating food in silence, the tension was palpable. Finally, because she’s still young enough to not necessarily have 100% expertise in social situations, Thea Queen slipped away from the table for a moment and came back with her Heavensong bow, a 36-arrow quiver of seafoam-colored arrows, and her seafoam-colored kunoichi costume with extra blocks of Kevlar and chain armor woven in for extra safety and placed the bow and arrow on the table to the awe and shock of her mother.

“I’m Artemis. I was out at the Battle of the Glades tonight, stopping assassins from the Black Spider Clan from destroying the city. I love being a heroine, and I don’t think I can ever stop. But, if I’m being honest, it’s you who were an example to me, Oliver. Mom changed when we all thought you died. I wanted to make you proud of me, and when I saw you on those rooftops fighting for our city, I knew I couldn’t just let you leave without telling you to your face” Thea said, using all of the training Momiji and Ryu had given her to make sure she wouldn’t break down.

“What do you mean, SAW me?” Oliver said, and at this, Nyssa and Laurel leaned forward ready to calm the man down. This was not Oliver Queen, happy-go-lucky playboy now. This, this was **_Al-Sahim_**.

“On the rooftop, there were news helicopters all around. Did you not see them?” Thea said, and Laurel and Nyssa glanced around the table to realize, to their dawning horror, that everyone else at the table had seen them.

“You know what we have to do, Al-Shaytana? We have to call Ra’s. He has to know before we do anything” said Laurel, and at this, she and Nyssa blanched. They had all heard stories, and been there when it happened in some cases, about what Ra’s reaction would be for those people who indiscreetly approached a target. It was, in every way that mattered, the one rule you did not break if you were interested in living

And to now know that the Demon’s Head was about to discover that three-fourths of his premiere strike team, a strike team that included one of his own daughters, had broken that one rule was not a feeling they treasured.

But before that, and this was also in no way something they wanted to have to do, Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance would have to explain how it was they fell under the thrall of the League of Assassins. It was not going to be an easy story, or a pleasant one, but they knew it had to be told.

So, while Nyssa went off to make what had to have been the most uncomfortable phone call of her life, Oliver and Laurel began to explain. They told the story about how their boat had been the victim of obvious sabotage, although the question of who sabotaged said boat was still open. Then, with a sorrowful glance towards Thea, they explained how Oliver’s father told them about how he had failed the city, and how he was tasking Laurel and Oliver with fixing it when they got back home. Then, the story about how they had found themselves on Lian Yu and been confronted by Al-Shaytana and Al-Dhiyb. The stories of how they were indoctrinated into the league, and the things they had done to ensure that they were members in good standing, were stories that both Oliver and Laurel figured no one particularly needed to hear.

And when they were done, there was one question on the minds of everyone at the table, and again Thea asked it.

“So, what were your names? Al-Shaytana is the woman who had to make that phone call, and I’m guessing Al-Dhiyb is your friend who died. What were yours?” Thea asked, innocently as everyone leaned forward to get the answer to that question.

“You have to understand this. You do not choose your league name. Attempting to is the height of arrogance, and there is nothing at all that our order despises more completely than arrogance. Every name of any League member in good standing is bestowed upon us, not something we demand. But to answer your question, my name is Al-Kanari” said Laurel, and at this Dinah Drake began to cry tears of happiness.

But before she could explain, Oliver and Laurel heard it. They knew what they were listening for, after all. The sound of sandals on grass was something they had trained months to be able to ascertain, even blindfolded with earplugs in. Also, whoever was on the lawn, they hadn’t figured out how to draw their swords without the sword making a distinct noise. If you were a civilian, you probably wouldn’t hear any of this. You wouldn’t even know what you were listening for.

But and this was a really bad thing for the people on the lawn, 90% of the people in the house were NOT civilians. The people here were either highly trained assassins, a kunoichi one step away from being called a master ninja, or world-class hand-to-hand fighters.

Even though they were all grieving, or seeing family they thought dead, everyone here knew what had to be done. The Black Spider Clan, and their associates and confederates, had taken too much from them. **_The line must be drawn here_**.

So, as Nyssa returned, Oliver and she began to plan. Realizing that they had three archers, Nyssa and Thea snuck out of the back of the house and climbed onto the roof. With a glance, Oliver wordlessly communicated with Nyssa that he was going to stay in the house and help the rest of the team fight off whatever pig-headed idiots got through the two master archers on the roof while his mother hid in the wine cellar-slash-panic room in the basement. Behind him stood what was left of the Lance family. Oliver thought as he grabbed his compound bow and nocked an arrow, in the last normal thought he knew he would have before another battle begun, that it was perhaps fitting that his latest battle would be with the entirety of the Lance family right behind him. He had known Sara all of his life, and fought alongside Laurel since their boat capsized on Lian Yu. But Dinah, their mother? THAT was surprising.

Just appraising her as a combatant, it was clear to Oliver that the bulk of her training happened in the 1970’s. Her movement style, and the general emphasis it would undoubtedly have on the sort of stuff you might have seen from kung-fu movies during that time period, was at least 2 generations old. But as he thought about it further, this was a good thing. No sensei worth his salt would be teaching the defenses to her movement pattern. The style had become outdated.

And so, as the door to the Queen Mansion was blown off of the hinges with what looked like Semtex, Oliver Queen and the Lances went to work. He noticed that from what sounded like 3 units, the people who made it through the front door were a force of no more than 12. Laurel, of course, used her kanabo, escrima sticks, and muay thai to make sure no one would try it with her. To his left, he saw Sara Lance dispatching people with what looked like judo throws in addition to hand and foot techniques that put him in mind of the stuff Ryu Hayabusa had been doing with swords and those falcon talons things he found so interesting. All the while, Dinah was using a combination of kung-fu and western boxing to keep the few people who decided to try her at bay. And then, it happened.

Laurel got knocked down with a lucky shot from one of the few kyudoka, or Japanese archers, that were still left on the front lawn. In milliseconds, Dinah Lance screamed and Oliver and Sara could literally see the sound waves fly from out of her mouth towards the kyudoka who quickly flew into an oak tree. Picking her daughter up, everyone looked around to see the damage.

Finally, Oliver spoke up.

“Raisa is going to be PISSED” he said, with a delivery that bordered on the Saharan it was so dry.

**_A few hours later…._ **

\---------------------------------

As the Defenders, as they were beginning to think of themselves, polished off the rest of dinner, Dinah pulled her daughters to one side and explained what had happened.

“Before your father, before you, I was a vigilante too. I patrolled my city to make sure that all those who got pleasure in seeing women suffer would not be able to run from my justice. I promised your father that I would stop when I married him. And I was happier than I could have ever been when you, Laurel, were going to become a lawyer. But when we lost your father, I needed to be what I had once been. I needed to remind the city, remind myself really, that it always needed someone watching over it. Do you want to know what I called myself, Laurel, and why I got so happy when I heard what your league name was?” Dinah said, trying and mostly succeeding to keep the tears from leaving her. This was important, and she owed it to her daughters to be strong the way Quentin would have been strong for them.

“I was the Black Canary. And to hear that you are taking on my mantle, if only in the League of Assassins, fills me with a joy I didn’t know I could have anymore. But I’m sure that’s not the biggest thing you’re worried about right now, is it?” Dinah said, fully utilizing her motherly intuition.

“Apparently, when that particle accelerator wave went over the whole world, it created what they’re calling ‘enhanced’ humans. Some people got super speed, some got the strength of 100 Olympians, and it turns out that I got a scream that can crack windows and send people flying. What did you get, Laurel?” Dinah said, the hint of a smile on her face as she apparently knows the answer almost as quickly as she asked the question.

“Turns out I got the same thing. Seems I’m an heir to your legacy, although I know you don’t like that I’ve become an assassin and a killer” Laurel said, feeling sad about her life choices in front of her loving mother.

“Honey? You had to survive. Do you think I’m sad that you, even when you joined an ancient cult of assassins, wanted nothing more than to bring justice for those who couldn’t get it themselves? Or that you figured out what it meant to survive, to truly be something more than the person you were? Or that you beat the woman who ordered your father’s death? You don’t have to be ashamed about anything you did. You survived, and became the woman I know you always here. I am so proud of you, honey, and your father would be too” Dinah said confidently, before her daughter slumped into her mother’s arms and sobbed.

At that exact moment, Nyssa Al Ghul walked into the room and everyone paid attention. Even in just red jeans and a black tank top, she radiated competence, skill, and danger. No one disrespected Nyssa, or ignored her when she started talking.

“I have spoken to Ra’s. We are expected in Nanda Parbat in 5 days.” 


	3. Expressions Of Faith

Nanda Parbat is terribly imposing. It’s literally carved out of rock in the middle of a Tibetan mountain range, and can only be reached by walking through said mountains. You can’t fly there, or take a boat. What’s more, no one is really supposed to know it exists. If you show up, and have not been specifically requested to be there, the chances are high that you will never be heard from again. By consensus, and more than a fair bit of bloodshed, only league members in the highest standing are allowed to enter and exit at their own free will.

The intimidation does not fade even if you’re a member of the League of Assassins, and know the secret entrances, even if it does sort of become background noises to the ancient scrolls that have your targets written on them in disappearing ink. But for Oliver Queen, Laurel Lance, and Nyssa Al-Ghul, they suddenly felt like initiates as they walked through the door. Having to see Ra’s Al-Ghul, and be specifically commanded into his presence, was utterly terrifying.

And yet, beneath that fear, there was something else. Maybe it was the way the other members in good standing were looking at them, namely Al-Owal who had never been the hugest fan of having women that high up on the totem pole. And as they walked through the halls, Al-Sahim, Al-Kanari, and Al-Shaytana were slowly coming to the conclusion that perhaps, just perhaps, this wasn’t going to be a situation where they had to fight their way out.

Finally when they arrived in front of Ra’s Al-Ghul, they kneeled completely and submitted themselves to his judgment. And as Ra’s got up, gripping the bejeweled handle of his sword as he looked at his members, all three of them hoped they were not about to have their heads cut off.

**_Three Days Earlier, in Ra’s Al Ghul’s private quarters….._ **

\-----------------------------------------------------------------------

(Ra’s Al Ghul’s POV)

The difficult job about being the Demon’s Head is that sometimes, for the good of the League, you have to let certain members go. And in this case, there was no other good option than to let Al-Sahim, Al-Kanari, and Al-Shaytana go. But knowing he had to do it, and hating doing it all the same, was a conflict that he supposed he could live with. Because, grace be upon him, Allah himself could not have sculpted warriors better than the three he was about to release from their vows.

He knew what he was losing when he would do this. His two best archers, his two best stealth fighters and charmers for those times when a target needed a softer touch, two-thirds of his most brutal warriors, and most importantly, his only link to whatever remained of the Black Spider Clan. This world he now lived in was different than the one he imagined, and he knew that the enemies his order had made in the Battle of The Glades would not die easily now. He would always need some way to keep track of their order. But how to do that without the aid of these three? This was not a question he relished trying to answer.

And then, it hit him. He usually, on those rare occasions when he had to release a member, would often make them live to conditions that directly related to their release. For instance, with the Detective, he made him vow to never attempt to apprehend a League assassin for any murder taking place outside of Gotham. (Explaining that little bit to his top assassins later, he explained that the people who would usually be targeted in Gotham were rich and powerful enough that they would take vacations to a place where this deal would be beneficial. If, however, they were killed in Gotham, the Detective would be duty-bound to intervene.)

So what would be the codes he expected his three top warriors to follow? For one, he would expect them to train their replacements who would join the League in their stead. Secondly, any intelligence they found on the Black Spider Clan would be shared with the league. Summoning his horseman, Al-Owal, Ra’s wanted to see if he was letting his annoyance outweigh his rational thinking. Allah knows, the people he was looking would be utterly impossible to replace. The league would have to change, as it always had, to fill the vacuum that would be left.

And as he explained the plan to Al-Owal, and got a nod of approval from it, Ra’s felt better about things. He would NOT become Suleiman, the ruler whose recklessness turned the Ottoman Empire from a world power into the staggering old man of Europe whose territories and powers were quickly carved up inside of a generation. He had met the man, and swore his forces to help him move further into Austria-Hungary. Despite the kindness of that offer, he had always worried about the man. What happened later, and the way in which the empire had fallen, had only served to prove his theory. Ra’s was not about to let his League fall victim to the same recklessness and greed.

**_Back in Nanda Parbat’s main hall……_ **

\-----------------------------------------------------------

As Ra’s still held onto the sword, the worries of the three world-class fighters kneeling in front of him did not fade. Soon, though, he spoke in the deep voice that, in his day as a warrior, had chilled all those who heard it.

“Al-Sahim, Al-Kanari, Al-Shaytana. Your service to this league has been vast, and invaluable. There are not words to describe what you have done to further the cause of justice, and to ensure that the League is stronger because of it. But your time with us must be at an end. The Battle of the Glades meant you were seen, and the world believes you all to be heroes now. I cannot, as your leader, allow you to continue to serve our balance in the shadows when you could do just as much good work in the light. But before I release you from your sacred vows, I have conditions” Ra’s said.

At this, Oliver, Laurel, and Nyssa listened, prepared to agree with whatever specifications he had.

“Firstly, you will find suitable replacements and train them to understand what being a member of the League is. And any intelligence you might find in your new lives directly regarding the Black Spider Clan will be shared with us. Is that clear?” Ra’s stated, the relative warmth in his voice from earlier gone completely.

“Yes, your grace” they all stated.

“Oliver Jonas Queen, you are relieved of your duties and responsibilities as a member of the League. Dinah Laurel Lance, you are relieved from your duties and responsibilities as a member of the League. Nyssa Al-Ghul, you are removed from responsibilities and duties as a member of the league. Peace be upon you.”

As Oliver and Laurel pick up their weapons and head towards the door, they glance at each other for a moment as Ra’s and Nyssa bow to each other in acknowledgment.

Oliver and Laurel had known, without Nyssa having to say, that the relationship between father and daughter had always been complicated. It had to be difficult, if not almost impossible, to be the daughter of someone as skilled in combat as her father was, and then suddenly be expected to be as brilliant as him. And she had done it. So to see them bowing to each other, one honored warrior thanking another for their service to a sacred cause, they all knew what that would mean to Nyssa. Grabbing their weapons, and preparing to return to their old lives, Oliver Queen and Dinah Laurel Lance had one question for their longtime friend and partner.

“So, Ms. Raatko, where to now?” Laurel asked, Oliver smirking as they both knew the answer.

“Anywhere Sara is.” And with that, they left Nanda Parbat for the last time as members of the League of Assassins. There would be a time when they would return, but not as members. So, as they finished walking back down the mountain, all three of them glanced back up at the compound and knew what they must do.

Oliver and Laurel had converted to Islam while with the League, and Nyssa had always ascribed to the faith. It was one of the ways in which the League ensured their members remained in complete possession of their humanity. As one of the imams explained to all of them during their shahada, or the Muslim profession of faith, “one can be a warrior, and a person. Having faith can only aid with this.”

At the foot of the mountain, all three dropped to their knees and said a deep and personal prayer of gratitude for their time with the League. There was no way they could have become the people they were now, the warriors attuned to the needs of the many, without their service. And now, they would use the skills they developed to help those who could not have called upon them in their past lives.

It was time to be something else, something better. But what?

**_Meanwhile, in Hong Kong……._ **

\-----------------------------------------

(Tatsu Yamashiro’s POV)

Even now, lying in bed with her husband by her side, she could still hear her blade Soultaker screaming to be fed. It had been the curse of her whole life to have this unholy power, and only be able to use it on low-rent thugs who could not beat her in a fair fight. She craved more, the chance to truly utilize all of her skills.

When would she get that chance, she wondered?

**_In Starling City……_ **

\------------------------------

(Alex Danvers’s POV)

She didn’t have to fight them ALL. She knew that. But there was fun in making sure that everyone knew you could not escape justice’s grips as long as Alex Danvers was around. So, with an annoyed glance at her partner McKenna Hall, Alex got to work. This was where she was meant to be, fighting for justice to ensure the weakened and downtrodden would have a fair chance at it. But in times like this, it wasn’t enough. These men would get off of the streets, and she would fight them again.

She wanted to be a great cop, and she wanted to make a DIFFERENCE instead of being one woman holding a bucket against a tsunami.

**_In Bludhaven….._ **

\---------------------------

(Jason Todd’s POV)

Batman was so _BORING_. It wasn’t that he didn’t learn enough to have 24 black belts, and a master’s degree in everything from criminology to psychology, but it was more something basic, something elemental. It always did seem like Bruce didn’t get that there were some criminals who just had to be put DOWN, had to be stopped for good.

That, he realized, was the basis for the split. They went their own ways, amicably, and as Jason watched over the city he loved as his own, he knew there would always be a need for a more permanent form of justice. But how could he go about finding it?


	4. Built From Scratch

When one chooses to become a hero, it’s not simple. You don’t just wake up and decide that’s what you want to do. Everything about who you are has to become different. It’s like developing a new skill, or a whole new set of them. The person you have to be, in every way that matters, is so markedly opposite the person you were that trying to find them again is very difficult.

But the rewards? The rewards are worth it.

**_In Hayabusa Village……_ **

\-------------------------------------------------

Thea Queen had, ever since Sara Marie Lance convinced her to start training, never gone into a place unarmed. Sure, she wasn’t about to walk into a high-society gala with her Heavensong bow in her purse (although the thought had some kind of appeal). But she was skilled enough as a natural fighter, having recently received her black belt in Kun Khmer or Cambodian kickboxing to go with her previously earned ones in Wing Chun, Muay Thai, and taekwondo, that it was never a problem. Plus, and of this she was generally sure, she could always hide small ceramic short swords known as fuma kudochi inside her garter belts or stockings whenever she went somewhere where dressing up was required. For regular everyday work, like going to the University of Washington-Starling City to get her B.A. in Asian Studies, she had figured out to keep her bow and a quiver of arrows in a locker right inside the front door of the place. Add to that her ability to see a building, and find its weak spots tremendously easy, and she could intellectually understand why she was here.

So, as she stood in front of a large temple in the Hayabusa village for her final test before becoming a Master Ninja, she felt some amount of comfort. Sure, her teacher could not tell her a single word about what she would have to do in order to become a master ninja, but she wouldn’t be doing it unarmed.

In exactly that moment, Ryu’s uncle Murai walked up and something felt wrong. This was a skill that none of her martial arts teachers had taught her, but something Quentin Lance had gone over with her. He knew, just by the virtue of her name, that there would always be people who would seek to do her harm because of money. So, for weeks, he taught her how to read body language. As he explained it, “Lots of people, kiddo, talk when they think you’re not listening. But it’s not with their mouths. It’s with the way they move. If you can hear what they’re saying, watch what they’re doing, you can make sure no one’s going to get the drop on you.”

So, with that knowledge at the forefront of her mind, she began to gauge this Murai character. He was tall, and confident in the way someone who carries a sword bigger than you and a pair of nunchakus on their belt loop is confident. But it was his eyes that drew her attention, and namely the way they beaded up when he looked at Ryu. One’s maternal uncle should not have that look for a family member, and yet here we were. Seeing that, she started to put together a mental checklist of all the things her dearly departed uncle Quentin would have run through if he was trying to figure out if someone was a suspect, or just someone who had a family dispute.

First, she glanced at his hands while she filled her quiver with arrows. She didn’t envision that she’d need to use these arrows, but a master ninja is never unprepared for an eventuality. He held those hands tight to his belt, almost as if he was reminding himself not to attack. Then, she noticed the way he was looking at her. Like he was cataloging all the information he could have of her, in the same way one would put together a dossier on someone they saw as a threat. As she put her fuma kudochi in their custom-made holsters, and grabbed a wooden sword from off the wall just in case, she began to think that maybe this Murai person wasn’t nearly as avuncular as his initial presentation had tried to make her believe.

And then, as she ducked behind a pine tree to get changed into her kunoichi outfit and prepare for her test to begin, she heard the last bit that let her know just how much danger she was in.

“This is highly irregular, Murai. Why are all of your soldiers fully armed, with loaded matchlock firearms? In all previous attempts to find a master ninja to carry on our bloodline, attempts which you guided yourself I may add, all castle guards were armed with sheathed blades and wooden swords. Now, when it is my turn to guide one of my students through a task that has already defeated several, you seek to make the challenge more difficult? For what purpose?” Ryu said, speaking louder than he normally would as Thea realized what she was hearing, and what Ryu was doing. Her teacher was telling her the guards would be armed, so she knew to be prepared.

“If she is as good as you say, Ryu, my clan’s defenses will be broken easily. Unless, of course, this is bluster. I look forward to seeing what this kunoichi, this Thea Queen, can do. Let the test begin.”

And with that, she knew her time to be prepared was over. Now to scale an ancient castle, defeat a building’s worth of armed guards, and escape before she is discovered. Easy.

Glancing around the building for a moment, Thea sees an opened window and sneaks into the granary and fires a blowdart loaded with a fast-acting incapacitating agent at the one guard on duty. Placing her teacher’s logo on his chest, Thea then skulked her way through the rest of the place, one room at a time, picking people off with blow darts, well-hidden sleeper holds, and even a few sharp blows with the handles of her twin short swords. Eventually, then, she found him. She couldn’t get to him from where she was with a blow dart, and the short sword trick damned sure wouldn’t work.

So, as she hung upside-down from a beam in the tower of this ancient castle praying to whatever god she could think of that she didn’t just fall on her head right now, Thea reached back behind herself and grabbed her trusty compound bow Heavensong. It had been with her the whole time in her training, and she had grown to care for it as though it were her own child. Polishing it regularly, making sure every cable and pulley was working to peak efficacy, she had gotten to a place where she could make what she saw was her only shot.

Pulling an arrow out of her quiver, one of the 20 she had loaded with fast-acting tranquilizers for this exact purpose, Thea Queen took a moment to exhale and aim before she moved to the middle of the beam while still upside-down and then fired and landed dead-center in the thigh of the Master of Arms and watched as he swayed momentarily and then collapsed to the floor. Marking him last with her teacher’s logo Artemis found a window, pried it open, and then used a grappling-hook arrow to send herself to the ground. Walking the perimeter of the castle she finally found herself standing in front of Murai and Ryu, handing her teacher her bow and quiver before bowing to the both of them and remaining in a kneeling position as she awaited their judgment.

“Thea Dearden Queen, in your test to become the first female master ninja in the Hayabusa clan, we gave you a very complicated challenge. And, I am happy to say, you have completed it. Please rise, Ms. Queen. Today, you are a master ninja.”

Embracing her teacher, Thea knew what she had to do. She had to go home, and tell Ollie. But before she did that, she had to tell her teacher something.

“Be very careful of sensei Murai, sensei. Something about him feels off.”

When Ryu Hayabusa heard something, a switch deep in the deepest darkest crevices of his mind flickered on and he felt like his mind was awash in bright white light. He would watch his uncle carefully, and keep his hand on his sword the whole time.

**_Meanwhile in an abandoned gym in Starling City…._ **

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“So, I can’t just use really sharp arrows now.”

As conversation-starting sentences go, it’s not the weirdest one Dinah Laurel Lance had ever heard, but it wouldn’t be too long before the roll got called.

“When his grace released us from our vows, he told us we could do more good as heroic figures than we ever could as assassins. So I want to honor what he believes and not kill, unless I am forced to.”

As Laurel starts alternating between throwing question mark kicks on a heavy bag and hand strikes on a Wing Chun dummy, she rolls her eyes as the amusement of what the love of her life is doing finally hits her. At times like this, it dawned on her just how different her life is now. Every time she thinks of it, she smiles because she remembers so much about it. She remembers how she thought of herself, as a future federal judge. There’s a part of her that still wants to do that, but she’s long since grown unsure as to just how powerful the law can actually be in order to provide justice. Right now, though, she knows all she needs to do is let Ollie talk this out. If he needs her advice, she’ll be able to tell. Five years building trust with each other through just about everything can do that for people.

“But I’m still an archer. In my soul, I’ll always be one. Slade taught me, Nyssa molded me into something special, and to honor what they did, I’ll always use a bow. So I decided to come up with ‘specialty arrows’. Heads designed to do a specific thing, that go on my regular arrows for when I don’t want to waste energy fighting.”

Finishing her kicking and striking regimen, and setting a timer on her phone for 2 hours before she has to lift weights, Laurel looks at her partner in all things and decides to draw him out.

“So what were you thinking, Ollie?”

In that moment, as he described all of his plans for all of the arrows he knew he would need, Al-Sahim began to die one net arrow, tranquilizer arrow, and heat-seeking arrow at a time. In its place, something else was beginning to coalesce from its ashes.

Heroes were being born, they both realized. What’s better? They didn’t much mind.


	5. Adding To Our Players

The stories of the Justice League start and end with the Green Arrow and the Black Canary. It’s not even that surprising when you think of it. The two linchpins of what would become the world’s finest elite unit of heroes would, by logical extension, have more stories to tell than all the other members recruited after them. But perhaps the most interesting story, and the one that changes the most depending on who gets asked about it and when, is how the beginnings of the Justice League started. While there are many different stories, and many different people who wish to be the ones to tell them and thus place themselves at the head of it, Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance have always maintained the same thing. The real first member of the Justice League, after them, was always Nyssa Al-Ghul.

The 2nd? That’s where things get interesting.

**_At the Walter Jones Memorial Courthouse in Starling City…._ **

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It always amused Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance about the things that worried them. After all, they had fought against Chechen separatists, former elite units of the Spestnaz and the Chinese Oriental Sword unit of the People’s Liberation Army, and done things that most normal people would think to be exceedingly complicated. But for them, this was down simply to the notion of being the sort of thing one does to stay in good standing in the League of Assassins. For better or worse, this was work.

But having to walk into a courthouse surrounded by paparazzi that wanted nothing more than to see the returning prince and princess of Starling City bring themselves back to life was a whole different kettle of fish. Lucky for them, there was someone there who was all too willing to intimidate any bottom-feeder who got close to them. Not for the first time, Al-Sahim and Al-Kanari realized just how much harder their lives would be without Nyssa Al-Ghul by their side. But then it hit them, like a thunderbolt.

When they left the courthouse, Nyssa would no longer be Nyssa Al-Ghul. There was just no other way around it that any of them could see, or be satisfied with. Continuing to keep the surname of someone so associated with an assassin’s guild that had existed since the time of Charlemagne was going to cause more trouble than it was worth. While the accountants for the League had made sure that all their earnings had been transferred to their own personal accounts, thus making them quite rich, they would still need things that most civilians had. Things like passports, jobs, and places to call home. So, this relatively perfunctory trip to the courthouse was now loaded with subtext, as it was the final cut to their old lives in Nanda Parbat.

Therefore, as the three of them sat in the parking lot of the courthouse in a tinted sportscar, they began to plan their next moves.

“What do you want to do, Nyssa? Besides Sara?” Oliver said, his Saharan-dry wit drawing him a glare from the love of his life and an amused smirk from his teacher and someone he perceived deeply as like a sister to him. He knew they were jokes, by and large, but in this moment of deep anxiety joking kept his concerns at bay.

“I have always dreamt of running a restaurant, one that provides employment to those who struggled to get back on their feet. It would, I suppose, allow me to have something of my life beyond the work we will do at nights” Nyssa said, and both Oliver and Laurel could feel the depth of feeling in that sentence. “And if I am thinking about it, I do believe I could use both of the Lance sisters as waitresses and cooks.”

Feigning a shudder, Oliver can’t help but think about that possibility. Laurel had been training under Nyssa to be a better cook. It was one of the things about being an assassin that no one stopped to think about, but made perfect sense if you did. Depending on where you went to find a target who had put themselves on the League’s radar, the chances were high that you couldn’t get nutritious meals unless you made them yourself. Also, nothing indicated “regular old tourist” and not “highly-trained extra-judicial killer” like shopping in a local market in Jeddah, or Riga, for whatever is local and fresh. So, whenever they weren’t actively deployed somewhere, Nyssa taught Laurel and Oliver how to make the Pan-Asian and Pan-Arabic food she had grown up on as a girl. It was useful, and having a restaurant in the Glades would be a good way to keep an eye on things.

“I could bankroll you guys while taking some purposefully vague position at Queen Consolidated. Mom knows what I do now, and I don’t think she’d mind if I came into the office whenever I could. But I don’t want to just be some rich guy with a job no one understands. When we were in the league, we built our own suits, our own weapons, and our own armor. If we’re all going to be something different, something that honors the requests Ra’s made for us, we need to have new gear. After we come back from the courthouse, we should talk about that” Oliver says, and they all agree. For while Nyssa was their field-general, and Laurel their most adaptable fighter, Oliver was, without question, the leader of their little trio. It had been earned with his facility for quick thinking and tactical planning, and the idea that he was the only one who could get Nyssa to smile and Laurel to focus.

And with that, they all got up. The questions they were asking, the things they wanted to get done, could wait. Their city, and Nyssa’s new home, were calling for them.

**_Meanwhile, at Narita International Airport in Tokyo…._ **

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Normally, after ninja training, Thea Queen would drag her exhausted frame over to the training table and inhale whatever food she could find. Ninja training included gymnastics, strength training, bodyweight training, and hours upon hours of skill development in everything from usage of a katana to theoretical discussions on how to best invade a fortified building. It always amused Ryu, and Momiji when she was around to see it, that “the stomach of a Yokozuna” lived in someone so small.

But here, in the food court inside this airport, she could not eat how she wanted. She was still entirely too excited by the notion that she had just become the 3rd master ninja ever to be tied to the Hayabusa clan, and the first female one in the clan’s history, to sit down and eat. But she knew Ryu would want her to, would not want her to take a trans-continental fight as she had without eating. So, as she walked through the airport and began buying and snacking from every kiosk in the food court that looked remotely appealing, she appreciated his quiet advice and caring for her. This wasn’t the first time she had noticed this, or even the first time she was happy for it being there. As a point of fact, as she began to think about it more, she realized that there was a depth of feeling she had in her towards her teacher that confused her. It had been him, more so than even Lady Shiva or Richard Dragon, who had heard her out about wanting to become a ninja to follow his example. It had been him, quiet and serene, who calmed her down when her regular life as a society girl became too difficult to bear. And now that she had done it, had fulfilled the promise and high standards he had for her, she realized he was the only one whose opinions she valued. Did she love him? She was not quite sure. But, for the first time, she was intensely interested in figuring that out.

And then, there was this whole Murai business. Everything about him, every way he moved and the overly-slick way in which he did things, gave her the sense of someone who was running his own game that didn’t involve Ryu except to hurt him. So, she supposed as she heard her gate announcement, that would be something she’d keep an eye on. Momiji was her friend, and someone who would be _DYING_ to help her work through her new feelings. If that meant she could use her fellow shrinemaidens to keep an eye on whatever it was Murai could be planning, much the better. The man she cared for this deeply, the man who had helped to give her purpose above and beyond just living the life of the idle rich, would not be harmed if she could prevent it.

**_Back in Starling City, USA…._ **

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That whole business with the city done, Nyssa, Oliver, and Laurel found a small Sri Lankan restaurant in University Village and decided to have a conversation that they had been procrastinating about. For the sake of making sure no one here could figure out what they were doing, and thus rat out SCPD about it, they spoke in Arabic as they ate.

“We need to be deliberate, and careful. This city is rotten from the inside out, and we know it now. But to save it, to truly save it, it can’t just be us three fighting against a tsunami. We need to figure out who should see our bows and kanabos, and who should get a softer touch. If we’re going to do this, we need intel. We need a team. Like we used to have” Laurel said, and at this, Nyssa and Oliver both nodded.

But as he thought of it, Oliver Queen realized they needed something else.

“We need more than that. We need a safehouse, and we need a quartermaster. None of us, not one, are armorers. We can’t maintain our bows when we get new ones, or keep the other weapons we have. That’s what we need if we want to do this properly” Oliver said, and at this, Laurel and Nyssa also agreed. They had gone through enough missions, and buried enough inexperienced and cocksure assassins, to realize the value of having someone around who made sure they had everything they needed to do the job properly. This solemn responsibility that they chose to take on, and there was no other way any of them could think about it other than that, required the best of themselves.

As she tucked in to a dish of steamed jasmine rice and prawns, Nyssa voiced the question they all were asking themselves. “We need a password, a way to determine who would be with on this and who is just going to report back to the Black Spider Clan, or HIVE, or whoever else has long sought to do the League harm. If we can’t do that, then all of this is pointless.”

At that, they stopped. Up until Nyssa said anything, they were beginning to exult about what their heroism could be, what they could do to save their city from harm. Nyssa’s typically quiet, and understated, question reminded them all how hard what they were doing was going to be, and how valuable. As they tucked into their dinners, they thought. This would not be easy.

But nothing worth doing ever was.

**_Meanwhile, in Central City……._ **

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Barry Allen could not really imagine a life before his speed. Sure, he knew there had been but it was so empty, so devoid of anything in the same continent as joy and life, that calling it that would have been an insult.

But now, that he could run and think faster than anyone else in the world? That was a different story. He wanted to be a hero too, like those three apparitions he had seen that night in the Battle of the Glades. He could just tell that they had true nobility and honor in their bones, and he needed as many people who were like that as he could find.

His foster dad, Joe West, had only just begun to accept the notion that he was different. He still, and this GALLED Barry, refused to accept Barry could be anything heroic. Even now, he could hear what Joe said. “You’re not a hero, Barry. You’re just someone with a whole ton of speed. If you want to see a hero, don’t look at those people fighting on the rooftops. Those people don’t care what happens. They were there when a BOMB went off and haven’t been seen since. If you want to see a hero, look to the beat cops of this city.”

This was one of those times where he wanted to get angry, NEEDED to get angry. But he just couldn’t bring himself to. There was something in him, some voice that he noticed that was louder ever since he got his speed, that told him fueling that anger would be a terrible idea. Not knowing what else to do, then, he started running.

Before he could even look up, he was in Starling City and found himself standing outside of a small Sri Lankan restaurant. And as he stopped, leaving sparks and a not-insignificant amount of smoke in his wake, he noticed that three people were sitting at a table by the window with their jaws on the ground.

**_Back in Starling City…._ **

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Peace be upon him, Allah himself could not have envisioned of the thing that was in front of them. Laurel knew she had been gifted powers, and the question of whether Oliver and Nyssa had was still wide-open. But this? This was beyond different.

In front of them, as they drank their tea and prepared to pay the check, was an honest-to-goodness personification of a demi-god. They would have to help this one. Laurel and Nyssa could not imagine what it would be like to have to fight an evil version of this kid in front of them.

But the reaction of Oliver Queen was different. He wasn’t seeing an enemy he would eventually have to deal with. He was seeing a little brother, someone to guide and teach. Right then, he came up with the shibboleth Nyssa had been thinking about.

“Kid? If you can finish this speech, we have a very interesting job offer for you. You are in your present plight because you do not do any part of your duty, small or great; for of course, if you were doing all that you should do, and were still in this evil case, you could not even hope for any improvement. What is the next part of the speech?” Oliver asked, and he saw the young man in front of him think for a minute and then smile.

“As it is, Philip has conquered your indolence and your indifference; but he has not conquered Athens. You have not been vanquished; you have never even stirred. And my name isn’t kid. It’s Barry Allen. Tell me what you have in mind.”


	6. Building a Team

The Justice League was always intended to be a collection of the most honorable, and bravest, heroes in the world. Bravery was more important than skill. Because, and this Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance knew from their own personal experience, there was a fighting style for anyone in the world who wanted to be able to use it. The Justice League’s hall of records had been sure to keep video records, and explanations from masters in the style, of just about every major and minor martial art that exists or has existed in the world. But bravery, honor, doing the right thing when the right thing is hard? Those are skills not easily found.

As they learned, not everyone has what it takes to be a hero.

**_At Chuck Knox International Airport in Starling City…._ **

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(Thea Queen’s POV)

She had become a master ninja. The one thing she had wanted to be, trained herself into the ground to be, she now was. So, as she walked back through the airport, heading towards where she knew her brother and surrogate sisters were waiting for her, Thea Dearden Queen refused to lose focus and be distracted. After what she told Ryu about Murai, she had no doubt she had been overheard. One did not get to run their own ninja clan by not having spies everywhere, and a network of intelligence gatherers that would put the CIA to shame. But it would be ok. All she had to do was to get to Oliver’s car, and they would look out for her against Murai’s archers, snipers using both traditional weaponry as well as matchlock firearms, or whoever he had in reserve for something such as this. After all, they knew what she was doing in Japan.

Walking straight through the airport, head straight as her eyes dart throughout the place looking for anyone who could be a threat, she thought about her life now. And not for the first time, she realized how much of a gift her mother, and later Sara Lance, had given her. She could see, in a way that hurt her, what it would have been like for her if she had not learned the value of discipline. A life like all her other rich friends, chasing the next party and the next high with nothing to look forward to, seemed like no life at all. But this? Doing good works and helping people? That was a life that was full, joyous, and worthy of the sacrifices one had to make in order to get there.

And as she saw her older brother, knowing by the way he was standing that he was fully-armed, she couldn’t help but smile and run into his arms. She knew a ninja was not supposed to be so bubbly, so happy, but she could not help herself. Besides, what was the point of being Artemis, of having gone through all the training she had, if you couldn’t enjoy it?

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He had been spending all day trying to come up with a new name, and new arrowheads, and was beginning to find the portion of his mind that could calmly think about such things blocked off. So, when his iPhone’s alarm went off, telling him it was time to pick up Thea from the airport, he called Laurel, Sara, and Nyssa and they headed off. After all, Thea had told them while in the air about the argument Ryu had gotten into with this Murai character. He knew Thea could take care of herself, even before that pilgrimage to Japan, but if things went the wrong way, he wanted to be there to take care of her, to look out for her like he had been unable to do during those 5 years away.

But as he got up, he grabbed his quiver full of 60 arrows and a miniature collapsible compound bow that the armorers from the League of Assassins made for him to use in just these circumstances. As he put the arrows inside their bag, he noticed that most of the arrowheads were a bright lime-green and got him thinking.

And so, as he stood in the baggage claim area waiting for his little sister, he started forming it in his mind. 5 years of the League of Assassin’s training had given him the ability to compartmentalize, to see an entire room of people and read it for threats while thinking about other things.

And what Oliver Queen was thinking of right now was the idea that his city needed as many heroes, people fighting on the side of the angels, as it could gather up. Living here was for people with steel in their spines, but even the strongest-backed people in the world could use some inspiration. And after 5 years feeling the flames of hell lick at his face, Oliver Queen was prepared to be that man. He would be the figure of hope for those who needed to see it, and a figure of absolute terror for those who thought they could never feel it.

And the name of that figure would be the Green Arrow. It was simple, and evocative.

He could talk with Laurel, and Nyssa, about what they wanted to represent. But he supposed they needed to have their own internal discussions about this. Plus, there was that new guy Barry Allen. He was building his own league, he realized, and that stopped him in his tracks. At this moment, he began to feel just a hint of the stresses Ra’s Al Ghul must have gone through on a regular basis.

And then, his baby sister Thea ran up to him. She was just so happy that he closed his mind to everything else. She deserved his attention.

(Thea Queen’s POV)

At this precise moment, she realized a problem. She wanted to tell Oliver everything, but realized that she didn’t know who would be listening in to their conversation. The notion of suddenly being placed in a position where she’d have to run from the FBI, or gods forbid, INTERPOL was not something she wanted to do. So, how to tell her brother what was going on without making sure anyone else heard?

Then, she remembered that they had both become very fluent in Japanese. Thea to properly learn and understand all the skills one might need to become a master ninja, and Oliver because it was just best practices for someone in his position to be expected to know enough of a country’s given language to survive. So, in just a moment, she began to speak in perfectly clipped Japanese.

“So, Ollie, guess what?” Thea said, literally bouncing on the balls of her feet.

“What, Speedy?” Oliver said, his voice betraying the fact that he already knew the answer but was looking for Thea to tell him herself.

“I did it. I became a master ninja, and you should have seen it Ollie. I made a shot with Heavensong you would have been so proud of. I want to tell you all about it but not here. Besides, I need to ask you, Laurel, and Nyssa a favor” she said, knowing she was about to ask her brother if she was losing her mind. Few people were smarter about reading people, about having a plan for every contingency in front of them, than he was.

And if what she had seen in Hayabusa Village was true, she’d need him. Because sometimes, you must stand and fight. Even when you don’t want to, even when it might be a bad idea, standing by and doing nothing is worse.

**_Meanwhile, in Central City……_ **

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(Barry Allen’s POV)

There was one thing about his speed Barry Allen realized was an issue: FOOD.

He had to wolf down everything that wasn’t nailed down just to prevent that weird wobbly feeling he had on his way back to Central City. That, he realized with some humor, was one of the only things Joe liked about him becoming the Flash. It had taken some doing, and a lot of deep heart-to-heart chats, for Joe to understand why it was that he felt like he couldn’t just sit idly by and use his speed to play parlor tricks and entertain neighborhood kids. Sure, he was still going to do some of that because he thought a hero should be someone people should look up to and see in their neighborhoods.

He didn’t see much of a point in being a guy who could break up bank robberies, and stop simple assaults, if he wasn’t also the guy who painted people’s fences, raced little kids so that they could say they beat the fastest man alive, and was around to walk people home and stand against bullies of all sorts.

And so, as he sat on a pier and wolfed down an entire pizza alongside a Dr. Pepper and an order of garlic knots, Bartholomew Henry Allen got to thinking. Iris and Eddie were happy, and he loved her enough that he would be happy if she was. Cisco and Caitlin were clearly head-over-heels for each other, and with what he knew of Caitlin’s life before he acquired his speed, there was no way he was going to interfere in that thing at all.

So, for right now, he’d date. Sure, there’d probably come a time when he’d see someone from across the room and know they were the one for him, but that time wasn’t now.

He was going to make his city proud, every day in as many ways as he could contemplate.

There’d come a day when he would be needed to save the world just like the three people whose counsel he had steadily sought. And when it was time for that, he knew he’d be ready. They were making sure of it.

**_Meanwhile, in Starling City at a Queen Consolidated Warehouse in Capitol Hill……_ **

\--------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

There were things he knew they needed, Oliver Queen realized, and 5 years being under a para-military guild with roots, resources, and training reaching all the way back to the days of Charlemagne made it abundantly clear what it was that they needed.

They needed a quartermaster and an armorer. Keeping sure they were stocked up on whetstones for their katanas, arrowheads and the proper repairing equipment for the compound bows they were using, and all the medical supplies one needs for this line of work would be a full-time job. There were few things that would hobble this new assignment that they were on faster than being out in the field and not having what you need when you need it. He still shivers when he remembers that horrible day in Singapore City when they lost 9 assassins because they ran out of arrows in a firefight against drug traffickers. Add to that the very real fact that they always need new arrow designs, and perhaps a weapon for Laurel that is less cartoonishly brutal than a kanabo, and you then need an armorer as well.

Filling those two jobs would be challenge enough, but it was nothing compared to his primary task. Right now, at this exact moment, he needed a base. In his mind’s eye, he could see it. Multiple Olympic-style archery targets for him and Nyssa, speed bags, heavy bags, and thai striking dummies for all three of them, and a state-of-the-art medical bay. There was going to have to be a whole bunch of space for this to work, and it couldn’t precisely say “Here be the operations center for the Green Arrow.”

So, that’s why he was here having a meeting with his mother about some mundane thing dealing with Queen Consolidated’s manufacturing wing, but it really was a touring session to figure out what of the under-utilized Queen Consolidated properties could be used for Oliver’s needs.

“So, if I had to guess, what you need in a headquarters is someplace big and out of the way with room for everything you need, and where you can keep yourself away from wandering eyes. But I think you’re missing something. You need someone to make sure you don’t go too far into this mission you’re choosing, and forget why it is you’re doing it. This city needs help, sure. And I suppose, your father and I have something to do with that. But it does not now, nor will it ever, need an assassin. It needs a hero, someone to do right by it and put what it needs above their own interests. It needs someone who stands for the people who can’t stand for themselves. If you can find someone like that, who can do any other jobs you need done, I think that’s your most important asset” Moira said, wisdom clear in her voice.

And just like that, Ollie realized, his mom would always be able to stop him in his tracks. It didn’t matter that he had been trained for five years by some of the best martial minds in the known world, it would always be this way. No matter how many martial arts he knew, no matter how skilled he was with a bow, Moira Queen would always be the one who could bend him to her will. He supposed Laurel could too, but they were partners. This was different.

“Who do you have in mind, mom?” Oliver said, knowing her well enough to intimately realize that this is the sort of thing where she’s already got a plan in place.

“Well, there are two people. One of them works in IT, and the other works in our bio-medical wing. By the time we get back to the main office, I’ll have their resumes and their recommendation letters for you. I want you to save our city, Ollie, and these people will help you” Moira says, and Oliver nods his head in agreement.

**_A few hours later, at Queen Consolidated…….._ **

\---------------------------------------------------------

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Five years out of Nanda Parbat, there were enough things about her new life that looked nothing like the old one that she used to have that Dinah Laurel Lance could hardly believe it. For one, she had just gone on an interview for a job working as a paralegal and had to explain that she needed a dispensation for the five Islamic daily prayers, or _salat_ , in order to feel comfortable working there. (Sure, she had noticed the mocking look in the interviewer’s eyes when she asked the question, but she had not become the 4th-highest ranking member in the League of Assassins by not being able to chill someone’s blood with a look. The one she put on that poor interviewer was a **beauty**.)

But the biggest change was that she had learned how to read people, and read body language, in a way she didn’t think that she would have ever been able to do before she got on that boat to Lian Yu and had her whole life remolded. So, as she sat in Moira Queen’s executive offices waiting for Oliver and his mother to finish their meeting, she could see the woman waiting outside for them was eagerly anticipating getting a chance to do something. But as she looked closer, through a clear glass window, she noticed the outline of what looked like ritual scarification on her back. Maybe this one could help them.

(Felicity Smoak’s POV)

Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance were alive. Every news report in the Pacific Northwest was telling her so. Because of that, she knew what she needed to do. It had been her work with the security cameras in the McMillan Projects that let her know they were alive, and she could sell them on that to let her in. But how to gain their trust?

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

And then, she remembered the speech. Getting up carefully, her lower body still sore from her morning Muay Thai practice, she stood to her full 5-7 in front of that young woman whose ID indicated she was Felicity Smoak and asked her the same question Oliver Queen asked Barry Allen.

“You are in your present plight because you do not do any part of your duty, small or great; for of course, if you were doing all that you should do, and were still in this evil case, you could not even hope for any improvement.” 

“I’m sorry. I’ve never heard of that.”

Glancing around the hallway, seeing no security in sight, Laurel backhands Felicity in the mouth and then knees her in the face which knocks the girl out. Dragging her into Moira’s office she unzips the back of her dress, and her mouth drops and all the saliva leaves it. What she saw was **_NOT_** ritual scarification, but instead, the Black Spider Clan emblem tattooed on the back of this girl.

Reaching for her cellphone, Laurel Lance called Nyssa Raatko.

“Nyssa? Call the League’s men in Starling. Tell them we have someone for them to…. Interview.”


	7. Understanding

The thing most people tend to not understand about superheroes, especially those rare few who get the green-and-gold letter announcing their invitation into the Justice League, is that they don’t win all the time. Honestly, sometimes, losing is the point. If all you ever do is win, if you don’t know what it means to fail even when there’s not one more thing you could have done, you won’t know the value of proper preparation. You’ll get arrogant, and loose on the things that truly matter. This lesson has been taught again and again, but the Green Arrow and the Black Canary never think it gets taught enough. Because when they learned it, it nearly cost them everything.

**_In Starling City…._ **

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(Murai’s POV)

He had stalked this American girl, this CHILD playing at adult things, with care. She may be a pretender to a grand lineage, but she had shown some natural talent for this. Besides, from what his spies had been able to piece together, she was a confederate of those three who had fought in the Battle of the Glades alongside Ryu Hayabusa. The point of this whole thing, after all, was to call as little attention to himself as he possibly could. If you could win a war, and that is what this undoubtedly was to him, without engaging in open battle even once, why wouldn’t you? Would the victory be sweeter if you lost men to earn it? He knew the answer to that. All generals, and leaders, knew the answer to that question.

And so, as he walked through the Starling City airport in a three-piece suit to further camouflage his true intentions, he remembered the stories of the great clans who built his country. He remembered how his country, the one his father and grandfather had fought so hard to protect and keep strong, had descended into a period of warring states. He would not lead a clan that would do this.

Walking through the airport, noticing that the general air of this place seemed to be deeply infused with a desire for combat and a sense of hope in its future almost imperceptible, he remembered the deals he had made to keep his clan strong, and to ensure that when the day came that he wiped the Hayabusa clan off the map there would be no enemies to rise in their wake. This was his gift, he thought. Let the child believe he had an ally in the Shadow Ninja Clan. Because when the time came, when the shadows and darkness he controlled wrapped their hands around the boy’s throat, he wanted to make sure there was no way Ryu could pry his head free.

Once he met his limousine and headed to where he knew his quarry would be, he smiled. He could play the role of Japanese tech baron for as long as he needed to get close enough to Thea Queen to do the things he wanted done. Simply put, there was no woman born who could defeat him. Of this, he was utterly sure.

And even if there was, even if there was some woman who could best him in hand-to-hand combat, he was smarter than any of them. It would never get that far.

**_At the Queen Mansion in Starling City….._ **

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(Nyssa Raatko’s POV)

She had always prided herself on being an educated woman. What point was there in a cover identity as a society woman with impeccable breeding and old-money wealth and resources if you couldn’t hold a conversation about the Iliad, or the wars of the Ottoman Empire? Being smart and skilled in discussing literature, art, and history had catalyzed from a good way to distract from what she truly was to a part of what she wanted to become.

It was in that spirit that she was here, enjoying a cognac older than all of her new confederates put together, trying to think of her new nom de plume. The old one, the Demoness, seemed a little dark for what she was trying to do. She understood that she could not love the city in the same way Oliver and Laurel did. They had lived here, grown up here, seen it at its height and wanted nothing more than to return it to what it had been. They wanted to protect this place, to restore it to its glorious reputation. She had no knowledge of any of that. To her, this was home now. But she did not feel kinship with it. It was not Dubai, where she was raised as a girl, or Cairo, where she studied.

This question was agony for her, in a way she could not truly understand. She had been trained since birth in the deadly arts, and on how to be a proper lady when she did not have a bow or a sword. Now, though, she could not take a life. This was a thing they had sworn to while on the way back from Nanda Parbat. They were officers now, sworn to a higher code than anything the SCPD would dream of understanding, and that meant they had to be willing to see their quarry put in federal prison, not murdered in cold blood. But she could not think of a name for the thing she wanted to be, and she KNEW what she wanted to be. She wanted to be, even more than the Green Arrow and the Black Canary, the name that was spoken in fear amongst the criminal underworld of this place.

In her mind’s eye, she could see it. Terrified mob bosses and gang kingpins tucking their kids in at night, telling them how “if they snitch, Nyssa Raatko will visit you while you sleep”. And then, she saw it and knew what it would be.

It would honor the man who had taught her so much, showed her she needed to be human. It would mean the world to him, if he saw it.

Nyssa Raatko would be the She-Wolf, and it meant that when they found a quartermaster and an armorer, she would need his weapons remade to suit her needs.

Because, and this she knew, Slade Wilson would have been with them if he could have. He would have wanted a part of this.

**_Meanwhile, at the Quad on the University of Washington-Starling City….._ **

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(Thea Queen’s POV)

There were many changes in the way Thea Dearden Queen looked, and to a one, each of these changes replaced her old friend group of rich girls living off of their expense accounts with no plan for someone more substantial. But the biggest change, and the one she was thinking about at the moment, was her neck. The rich girls she saw at class, the ones with no direction other than the next party, had small necks with no sign that they did anything. Her, though? She had a thicker neck than some of the players on the football team, because she was training to give back to the city that had given her so much. It had been the neck training, and her devotion to it, that let Lady Shiva, and Ryu later, know she was serious. Shiva had drilled into her again and again the value of having a strong and muscular neck, that it served as a shock absorber for heavy blows that she would nonetheless be very disappointed if Thea actually took.

She was thinking of all of these things, and then out of the corner of her eye, she saw him. Murai. And instantly, she knew. He was here for her, because why else would the leader of a clan be here otherwise? Almost as quickly, her mind went to that cold logical place Master Ryu said all great ninja needed to have, where she measured her surroundings and figured out the best course of action. Her trusty gym bag had Heavensong in it, and her quiver, but to pull it out and start fighting would mean everyone here knew that she was Artemis. That could be done. Running was the next choice, but only a fool would believe that these poorly-trained, and poorly-conditioned, school security guards would be able to beat someone the caliber of Murai, or even hold him off long enough for Thea to get to a place where she could appear as Artemis. But then there was the other thing. Could she beat Murai? Ryu had told her stories about him, and how he was a tremendous challenge even for him.

It was time, then, to set a trap. She knew Oliver would pick her up, and if there was anyone she knew who could beat Murai, it would be him. (Sure, she thought of Lady Shiva for a hot second. But, honestly, calling Lady Shiva in for something like this is like blowing your house up because a spider’s in there.)

So, keeping her eyes on him the whole time, Artemis opened up her iPhone and called the Green Arrow.

“Ollie? He’s here. I need you to come get me, and bring your gear.”

“Be right there. Do you want me to call Laurel, and Nyssa?”

“No. Just you.”

**_At the gym in the Queen Mansion……_ **

\-----------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Thea wouldn’t call unless it was important, and she didn’t think she could win. Allah knows, they had seen her commendation for being a master ninja. She could fire her smaller compound bow with tremendous accuracy, and had truly become adept with those short swords and even had shown interest in carrying around a Chinese-style dao Nyssa wasn’t going to be using anymore.

There was also only one person who would have been the “he” Thea was talking about. This was Murai. It had to be, and knowing that did not make what he had to do any easier. Oliver had used all the intelligence he could muster up to find anything about this Murai character, and what he saw chilled him to the core. Apparently, from what he had been able to pierce together, if Murai had really wanted to he could be a challenge for Ra’s Al Ghul in his prime. And when Oliver remembered how difficult he had personally found it sparring with an aged Ra’s, exhausted from years as a frontline commander, it dawned on him that there was a very high chance he would not win this thing.

But, just as quickly, he realized that didn’t matter. If there was one thing his five years in the League had taught him, it was this one truism above all others: Always try. Justice is not easy. But trying to find it, committing yourself to the responsibilities that came with enforcing it, was a noble task to spend your life trying to fulfill.

And so, as he grabbed his heavy leathers which were a remnant of his time at the league, Oliver Queen turned himself into the Green Arrow for the first time. Even though he was still clad in the black of the League, he knew that would not be forever. The employees who had been shunted to his task would be making him and his confederates new gear, new weapons befitting their new station. But for right now?

One last time, the feared bringer of vengeance and death would appear. If Murai wished to face someone unafraid of him, Al-Sahim would answer the call.


	8. Child and Master

(Author’s Note: This is using the classic origin story of Wonder Woman. Also, think of Gal Gadot as the Wonder Woman I’m going for.)

Diana Prince, or Wonder Woman as she became known to the world, was always rightly proud of her pan-Greek heritage. She had literally been made, not born but made, by her mother Hippolyta on the ancient island Themyscira and could count several actual Greek gods as teachers. It stood to reason that someone with her background would worship everything Greece had brought to the world. And thusly, when she was a child, she indulged in everything. Books on rhetoric, law, medicine, and especially the Greek martial arts used by the Spartan army to such devastating effect. But she realized eventually that she needed more out of life than simply training on the Paradise Islands. Steve Trevor had helped with that, showed her what life could mean when she first saw Man’s World during the Great War.

But she needed more. She craved culture, all the things she had missed while she was on Themyscira. So, after explaining to her understanding mother what she needed, Diana Prince settled in Los Angeles. It was everything that she needed in her new life. A place where she could mourn Steve properly, without seeing memories or mementos of his life and what she had meant to him. But soon, even though she didn’t want to, something would draw her back into the warrior’s life again.

And that something was the Battle of the Glades. Those three heroes, fighting and battling against an army who outnumbered them by a googolplex, stirred something in her she long thought dead. Long wished dead, if she was being honest. But as she saw the Battle of the Glades, she remembered what Steve had given up and the promise to live a life he would be proud of.

So, as she watched the footage of it on this thoroughly fascinating invention called TV, Diana Prince made a promise. If she was ever able to do so, if any one of those three heroes ever needed help, she would be there. And as it turned out, that happened far quicker than she could have imagined.

**_On the campus of UW-Starling City…._ **

\---------------------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Driving his Ducati 996R into a parking spot, Oliver Queen took a moment to compose himself before dipping into a nearby alcove. Thea Queen’s big brother was no longer here, he thought to himself. Point of fact, neither was Thea Queen.

For what they were about to do, they couldn’t be those people. Oliver Queen was a spoiled brat who everyone thought was undeserving of his wealth and resources. Thea Queen was a rich girl who spent more time being featured on paparazzi websites and cheesecake blogs than she did studying. Those people weren’t warriors.

But Artemis was noble and kind. And the Hood, the name he was living with because up until now he hadn’t announced himself as the Green Arrow, was a warrior with a well-known reputation. Those were the people who were here, whose presence Murai had demanded without saying a single word.

And so, as he pulled his compound bow, quiver, and classically-made katana out, he knew that this would be the last time anyone would see the Hood. He would no longer cut the imposing figure of vengeance. After this, he would be the Green Arrow. But if Murai needed a fight, if he needed someone to battle, Al-Sahim would be that man.

(Thea Queen’s POV)

This was ridiculous, she knew. Murai had a plan. He had to. There was no reason, none that she could see, why he would just show himself publicly. This was a master ninja, for goodness sake. He was not reckless enough to just appear, without having a backup plan that more than likely had backup plans. But and this is the part she also knew, Murai could not just be allowed to roam free in Starling City. This was someone who clearly wanted her to fight him, and if that was the case, she would give him what he wanted rather than put innocent people at risk just to avoid falling into a trap.

But, while Murai was a tough opponent, she had advantages. For one, this was her campus. She knew every hiding place, every alcove and easily created sniper’s nest where she could fire arrows from in relative safety. Secondly, and this was a thing that she had taken great care to not publicize, the armorers in the Hayabusa village had provided her with some compounds for her arrowheads that had been specially designed for ninja of the type she was now expected to be facing.

She knew Oliver would take on Murai head-on. While she was a ninja, and a master of infiltrating buildings and theft, she was also no fool. Slender of build, and still working on improving her strength, there was a very real chance that she would be swatted away with ease should she get into a physical fight. Oliver, though, was different. He had all her skills and the strength to make the blows he would attempt to land count. They hadn’t talked about this, but when you are fighting alongside family, you don’t have to. They both had sat at the feet of tactical masters, Ryu Hayabusa for her sake and Ra’s Al Ghul for his. These were people who could teach you how to read a room, and a battle, with ease if you were willing to learn.

Rather, her role would be the role of ninja through time. Sneak around, find weak spots, and attack before she could be seen. She could do that, and so that was their plan. All she hoped was that it was enough.

**_At the football field on the campus of UW-Starling City…._ **

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Murai’s POV)

At times like this, knowing the duel that was coming, he could not help but smile. The memories of his father, the head of his clan before him, returned to him at a time like this. His father, Oda, was a man of uncommon rage. It had been said that during his time, entire villages had been burned for the crime of not properly making his ramen.

His father had died, as he would have wanted, in battle at the hand of a superior fighter. Even now, decades after the fact, that fighter’s name is still on his lips, still burns to say out loud: Slade Wilson. It had taken him all his charm, more than a few threats, and bribes on top of bribes to get the name, but he was glad he did.

Because once he found that out, it did not precisely take a ton of work to imagine who his confederates were. Ryu Hayabusa, of course, was one. The boy had an uncommon sense of justice, and he was sure that was going to get him in trouble one day. It had been the other 3 who were the hardest to understand. But it turned out, if you’re willing to throw some money around, you can get answers to all manner of questions.

The other 3, the people who had allied with Slade Wilson, were Oliver Queen, Laurel Lance, and Nyssa Al-Ghul. If he did nothing else, he would break the three of them. So, imagine his glee when Thea Queen dipped into his life.

He knew she would react just like this, believing herself to not be capable of a hand-to-hand fight. And of course, she wasn’t. So, she’d call in the big gun, her big brother Oliver Queen. Honestly, could this day get any better?

\------------------------

So here they stood. Artemis and the Green Arrow at the 50-yard line, and Murai in the endzone.

“Look at him, Speedy. He’s just standing there. Like nothing is bothering him. Like he knows we can’t beat him” Oliver says, his katana at his side and his bow on his back. He knows that this is going to, perhaps, be the first fight he’s had since he washed up on Lian Yu where he’s not sure he’s going to win. It was an odd experience to know that for all he’s learned, and been taught, that he could be walking into something like this where he might not be able to win.

“Ollie, we might not be able to. From everything Ryu told me, he never had a harder fight than the one against Murai. Do you think we should call Laurel, and Nyssa?” Thea asked, grabbing her short swords, and prepping a grappling arrow in her quiver. If they were going to do this, she would be the sniper Ollie would need to make the work a little easier.

“No. We have to do this. Us. He threatened you, and that means he threatened our family. As much as I love Laurel, she’d want you and I to stay out of it if someone threatened Sara, or her mom. This is our fight, and they’d understand that” Oliver says, taking a momentary glance at Murai’s armor.

“That is really cool armor. It’s Japanese plate from the Tokugawa period, but I thought they destroyed all the specs for how to make it. Where did he get it? I’m going to ask him” Oliver said. Knowing what her big brother was looking to do, Thea fired a grappling arrow and headed to the roof of the science lab next door to the football field.

Drawing his katana, Oliver walks up to Murai and without a word Murai responds by pulling out his own blade which resembles the Dragon Sword his confederate Ryu Hayabusa had used. But this one doesn’t glow with white light. No, this one glows with an unholy, almost demonic, red hue and instantly, Oliver knows he’s in deep trouble.

“This is the Dark Dragon Blade, boy. It feeds on pain, suffering, and darkness. What better place for it to be than a place where your inattentiveness, your unwillingness to do all that you should have done, led to the death of 500 people. I can hear their screams, and the screams of all the families you should have saved. Battle me, boy, and I will make sure your screams join them.”

And with that, the battle is begun. Oliver tries every form he was taught by the masters of the League, and some he picked up from Ryu Hayabusa, but none of it works. Not one thing. They’re all parried, blocked, or countered.

Soon, blood clouded his vision from cuts on both hands and on his stomach. It wasn’t a deep one, he realized, because Murai didn’t **WANT** it to be. Murai was toying with him, treating this as a sparring session between a white belt and a black belt.

Meanwhile, Thea Queen was having her own problems. Turned out, Murai had figured out she was probably going to be on sniper duty for this and had put together a wholly brutal trap. Archers equal to her, ninja from his own elite guard, and siege works. If she hadn’t known any better, she would have imagined Murai had cased this place for a week.

But what they did not know was that this battle, which was quickly becoming a rout, had an audience. And that audience was about to come to their aid.

**_In Central City……._ **

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(Barry Allen’s POV)

A man stands up. That was his overarching thought as he saw Oliver Queen get beaten in a way he didn’t think anyone could get beaten and still be, you know, ALIVE.

But Oliver had been there for him as he followed the path to be a hero. It had been him who impressed upon him the need for allies, and to be precise about making sure he always knew what he was sprinting into. And to see him now, being battered like this, awoke something in Barry.

Flashing over to his suit, noticing new golden boots that had been made for him, he felt something flicker behind his eyes and knew it was the lightning he had been taught to harness.

He also knew he had to save Oliver Queen. And so he set off running. If Oliver Queen was going to show him what it meant to do good in the world, he was going to show Oliver Queen that he never needed to ask for help.

**_Meanwhile, in Los Angeles……_ **

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(Diana Prince’s POV)

She would be revealed, she knew that. But she found, as she snuck out of her post at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, it also came to her that she didn’t much care. To watch idly by as someone was killed on television, and do nothing because your secrets were more important, would have been a betrayal of everything that Steve stood for, and the promises she made to him. She could not abide that more than she could stop her heart from beating.

So, she got to the rooftop and removed her custom-made outfit from the finest fashion houses on Rodeo Drive to reveal the armor and weapons Hera and Aphrodite had worked through the night constructing. Her covered her arm to arm and head to toe, so she could battle any warrior who drew her attention. But it was form-fitting without being trashy, because Diana Prince was uncommonly gorgeous and to not use that weapon seemed ridiculous. As for weapons, what else was a Greek girl to have but a gladius and a spear? Anything else would be uncivilized.

And as she flew to Starling City, she used the time she had spent learning with Athena and hatched a plan. She would fight this ninja who bedeviled the man who had re-awoken her hero’s spirit. And after, she would swear her loyalty to his cause.

**_Back in Starling City….._ **

\-------------------------------------------

(Thea Queen’s POV)

Finally. It had taken her longer than she woujld have liked, and required her to use every ounce of martial arts training she knew, most of the arrows the arrowsmiths and fletchers at the Hayabusa Village had made for her, and her ninjato and twin daggers. But, with her roadblocks cleared out, she could do what she came here to do.

Reaching back to nock an arrow into Heavensong, though, she noticed a problem. All she had left were a sparklers arrow, a thing designed to distract but not do any real damage, and a CO2 arrow. And as she looked down, she knew she would need to think of something to do real damage. Because Ollie was getting hammered.

She had believed Ollie was a truly tremendous fighter, brilliant tactician, and perhaps the best archer in the world. But what he wasn’t, what he couldn’t be no matter how hard he tried, was all of those things against someone who outweighed him by 100 pounds.

And then, off in the distance, she heard something. Was that….. thunder? All she could see was a thunderbolt and a blast of lemon-colored lightning. And then, the lightning took Ollie away. But before she could do anything about that, the lightning climbed up the wall and took her away too. And as she felt herself being pulled away, she saw someone else flying onto the field.

She couldn’t tell you anything. Everything was moving too fast. But what she could see was stunning.

(Diana Prince’s POV)

Had she somehow called on Hermes on her way here? Because otherwise, she would need to have that lemon-colored lightning bolt explained to her. No matter, though. There was a battle and she was going to win it.

“Ninja. I have faced your kind many times. Your reckless attacks, and unwillingness to fight with honor, have always disgusted me. But no matter. You will fall just like all of those others before you.” And with that, Diana draws her short sword and charges.

Every blow this ninja attempts, she blocks. Every strike she throws, he blocks. Soon, they are at a stalemate. She has not seen a warrior of this caliber for generations, and yet…. She knows she can take him. But she doesn’t get that chance. Because, soon, a smoke bomb is thrown and when she recovers herself, the ninja is gone.

At this moment, she hears a muffled “Sorry” and then feels herself grabbed by that same lemon-colored lightning bolt. Where they’re going, she’s not quite sure. But she knows this lightning bolt saved Oliver Queen, and the warrior that was with him. She owed it to them all, she supposed, to let them explain everything.

**_At an empty Queen Consolidated warehouse……_ **

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(Barry Allen’s POV)

He hadn’t known where else to go. There was a warehouse deep in the Glades that Oliver had told them about, and that’s where he was going to take Oliver, Thea, and whoever that new mystery woman was. Because this needed to be better than it was.

Oliver Queen had showed him what being a hero could mean. He supposed it was time for him to show Oliver Queen the value of having a team.


	9. Background Details

Teamwork has always been, and will always be, the linchpin behind the Justice League in every one of their operations. The core members, the “Golden Generation” as the newspapers and historical records from the time call them, learned these lessons during their greatest battles. Without teaching each other skills and tactics, creating support networks, and sharing information, there would have been no way they survived long enough to become the exemplars of heroism that they did.

**_At an abandoned Queen Consolidated warehouse in Starling City…._ **

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He had been procrastinating. He knew that now. But, he supposed, it was time to get serious about doing some actual good. He remembered the way the targets from his old life as Al-Sahim reacted to him, with fear in their eyes as they knew their days were at an end. But now, surrounded by a family built in the service of that work, he needed to become the thing he had wanted to be.

But before he could do all that, his mind went to the strange woman in front of him. She had helped, he knew that. Barry had too, in a way he did not think he could ever properly thank him for. But whoever this mysterious woman was, he could tell two things about her: She was a warrior who just needed some modern touches, and Barry Allen was so utterly stunned at her beauty that he didn’t know what to do with himself. He supposed that, if this got better, Barry would suddenly find himself taking semi-regular trips to wherever this woman was.

He also knew that Thea had called Laurel and Nyssa. If Laurel had gotten hurt, Nyssa would have called him and Sara. So, the love of his life, and his 3rd sister, were going to be in this bunker. They’d stitch him back up, make sure he wasn’t hurt worse than it seemed, and then they would yell at him.

Because his loss meant that Al-Sahim was dead. That figure of fear, of destruction, was gone now. Murai hadn’t killed Oliver Queen. He hadn’t even really come close to trying, or given the sense that he wanted to. Rather, it was clear that he had a different intent this entire time. He had wanted to shatter the mystique of Al-Sahim.

But and this he knew was a needle he would have to thread with true grace, that meant that the Green Arrow could live now that Al-Sahim was gone. So too could whatever Laurel wanted to be, and Nyssa for that matter. They were no longer tied to their old lives, to their old reputations.

Before that, though, Oliver Queen had a responsibility. This woman was blessed with a warrior’s spirit, but he needed to know if she would stand alongside them in what was rapidly becoming a league.

“You are in your present plight because you do not do any part of your duty, small or great; for of course, if you were doing all that you should do, and were still in this evil case, you could not even hope for any improvement.”

With true speed, Diana responded.

“As it is, Philip has conquered your indolence and your indifference; but he has not conquered Athens. You have not been vanquished; you have never even stirred” the mysterious woman says. “My name is Diana Prince. It is my pleasure to battle alongside you whenever you call upon me.”

Shaking hands with this Diana Prince, Oliver looked around.

“As thankful as I am to both you and Barry, Diana, this never should have happened. We should have been better prepared for this, and not been in the position where we were forced to rely on help of this type. We need armorers to give us new weapons, quartermasters to make sure we have enough of what we need, and someone who can be here and provide us with tactical overwatch. We’ll discuss this with Laurel and Nyssa when they arrive, Thea, since I know you called them” Oliver said, and Barry sped back to Central City in a medium-yellow blur while Diana also took her leave to return to Los Angeles. What they were about to do was a discussion for the core 4, as they were thinking of it.

**_A few hours later……._ **

\-------------------------------------------------

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She supposed that if it had to happen, it should happen now. She didn’t really want it to happen, of course, but since it had it could at least be useful to them. Because, the truth of it was that none of them were really ready for this. They had, after all, spent five years in a guild of highly-trained assassins where all of their combat needs were handled without a 2nd thought. To now think that they had to do all of themselves was something they were taking their sweet time getting adjusted to.

Now, though, the choice had been taken away from them. Murai had made utterly sure of that. If they were going to survive, and see the master ninja again one day, it was past time that they did the work that wouldn’t be heralded. They’d need to hire an armorer to get them new weapons and armor, as their old ones were entirely too identifiable with their old lives. Plus, they needed a logistics expert to make sure they had enough of the arrows, bows, and medical supplies they would undoubtedly need. That led Laurel to realize they’d also need a medical doctor and hacker on staff, because lord knows there would come a time when the basic field medicine they had learned would not be good enough. That idea, that somehow one of them could be killed just because they didn’t know how to provide quick relief to a collapsed lung, was not something she relished thinking about.

So, she had a plan now. Things felt more peaceful, and like she was in control of herself, when she had something to do. Just adapting to the situation in front of her, and not knowing what she was expected to do next, was something like a nightmare. But this felt easier.

First, though, she had to get her mean face on. Because if they were going to truly be the vanguards she knew they needed to become, Al-Kanari needed to tell Al-Sahim how.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Grabbing his compound bow, realizing that he probably needed to have a bow fabricated that was far beyond the one he had in his hands now, Oliver Queen knew what was coming. He was no idiot, and besides even that, he was damned sure about to agree with whatever Laurel was going to say. He knew he had been reckless, but it was family. Not just the one he had built through five years training in the mountains, but the one that his father’s choices took from him. When all is dark and quiet, Robert’s voice comes to him. It’s not like seeing a ghost, not like that really. The voice only shows up when things are bad. But it tells him he has to keep going, that he has to try. Until the Murai incident, that is.

Now, he could hear his father tell him something different. Now, Robert Queen was telling his son he had to do better, had to become the hero he was always destined to be. “I didn’t give you this mission to survive, and not love the thing I asked you to save. To save this city, you need to love every person in it and let that love guide you” he heard Robert saying, and knew it to be true.

So, as his love Laurel Lance stomped down into what he was now thinking of as their headquarters, he glanced at her for a moment as they had a very interesting nonverbal conversation before he grabbed a satellite phone from his Al-Sahim gear before signaling for a trashcan.

“Mom? We’re at the old steel mill on the corner of Warner and Galloway. If you give us an hour, it’s probably time for Laurel and I to have interviews with those people you wanted us to talk to” Oliver said, watching Laurel smile as she was about to ask for the same thing and was prepared to yell at him to get it done. But despite being able to mollify Laurel, he knew he was going to be having no such luck with his mom.

“Good. Because if you’re going to go out there and get into fights on TV with people like you were doing, it’s probably a good idea to go in there a touch more prepared than you were. Lord knows I could have been doing better things with my afternoon than watching my son getting beaten up on Channel 52” says Moira, drawing a snicker from Laurel and a just-arrived Nyssa while Oliver rolls his eyes.

“Yes mom. I have to get changed. Interviews and all” smiles Oliver, knowing his mom heard Laurel and Nyssa snickering.

Looking around for some clothes, finding a three-piece suit that doesn’t look too far out of place on Savile Row, the future Green Arrow takes a moment to stand in front of his love, and their sister, and do something simple.

“I’m sorry. I should have been willing to ask for help, but she’s my sister. If it was Sara who was in the same situation, I would not have expected a call from you. I would have believed you would have handled it yourself, but we can’t do that anymore. The 4 of us have to be there for each other. No more going it alone. And that’s why we’re making this a real professional operation. Come upstairs. We’ll meet them in the conference room.”

**_A few hours later in the conference room….._ **

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(Winn Schott’s POV)

He knew that when he took the job for Queen Consolidated in their defense technology department, there was a real chance he’d end up getting called in for off-the-books work at some point. He had graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology as class valedictorian with a double PH.D in mechanical engineering and weapons engineering, and then took a job with Queen Consolidated. But up until now, all he had done was write blueprints and send them up to someone else. It wasn’t fulfilling work, but it was work.

And so, when he got called into a steel mill on the corner of Warner and Galloway, he kind of expected that he was about to be asked to do something that he wasn’t going to be writing reports on. But to walk into the room and see Oliver Queen, playboy and heir to his boss’s company and thus the fortune that came with it, standing in the middle of the room holding a compound bow and staring a hole through him suddenly made a whole bunch of things clear.

“So it was you? You were fighting in the Battle of the Glades? And that was you today, against that ninja at UW-Starling City?” he asked, feeling the beginnings of something he hadn’t felt for a very long time. Hope.

“Yes, Mr. Schott. I was. But now I need to be something else, something better than the man who was at the McMillan Projects that night. And that, Mr. Schott, is where you come in. I have heard of your work, and know you can do what I need done” and at this, Winn felt his jaw drop open to the point where he was concerned that it hit the table.

“What, Mr. Queen, do you need done?”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

 ** _GOOD._** The exact right answer he knew he needed to make this into a professional operation.

“First thing I need, Mr. Schott, is a new bow, and a quiver that can hold 60 arrows. It has been proven that in the medieval times, even in Japan, archers were capable of patrolling with a quiver of that size. Furthermore, I need a new bow because the old one is entirely too identifiable with my old life, and the person I once was. If I am truly serious about making a change, about being the hero this city deserves, I need to prove to it that I am no longer an assassin. I want to do good, Mr. Schott, but I can’t do it alone. I need the help of good men, and I happen to believe you are one of those men” he says, and hopes to goodness he’s right.

(Winn Schott’s POV)

His mind is rebooting. He knows that now. But eventually, enough of him comes back that he knows there is truly only one right answer.

“Yes, Mr. Queen. I will help you. This city can be saved, and it should be.”

Taking his leave, using his phone to make a quick call to Queen Consolidated to have his tools and computer equipment brought over, Winn looks around for a minute and makes one more call.

“Evening, honey. I won’t be back home tonight. I just got a transfer. Maybe you can fly up from National City, and we can have dinner this weekend. Love you, Kara Danvers. See you when you hear this.”

And with that said, Winn Schott found a table and asked for a few notepads. Just in the few minutes he was here, he had some ideas. He asked everyone in the building who was armed to put all of their weapons on the table so he could analyze them and make improvements. Oliver agreed, readily, and put his bow, arrows, flechettes, and katana on the table. Thea did the same, with the notable exception of her compound bow that was made for her in the Hayabusa Village, Heavensong.

“Ms. Queen, may I ask why you haven’t put that beautifully crafted bow on the table?” Winn asked, putting on an overly polite tone with a woman who was still holding a bow.

“You can replace the arrows, Mr. Schott. And you can improve my knockout darts and twin daggers. But understand one thing about my bow: it was made by the bowyers in the Hayabusa village for me, using steel ore from the same foundry Masamune used to create the finest swords the world have ever known. While I may be receiving new arrows that I have no doubt will be of the finest caliber, this bow is perfection. If you attempt to modify it in any way, we will see how good of a weapons designer you are with two broken hands. Are we clear?” Thea said, and all traces of the bubbly society girl are gone. Artemis showed back up just to make the point clear.

**_One Week Later……_ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Today was the day. Winn Schott had, from the time he arrived, worked day and night to make sure he had given them precisely what they needed. He wasn’t just working on new weapons. He was working on suits too.

It had been a weird week, to be sure. He had been measured all over, and asked more times than he could count about what his favorite shade of green was once it was made clear to Mr. Schott that he was going to be called the Green Arrow.

Thea was getting a new suit, and new weapons excluding her bow, as her threat to break both of the hands of Mr. Schott had been taken seriously enough that he hadn’t touched it except to marvel at its craftsmanship.

Laurel and Nyssa got the same treatment, too, although they were also getting whole new weapons forged from nothing other than what appeared to be Mr. Schott’s boundless imagination and their “thorough” coaching of him on the matter. He remembered what it was like to be there when they bothered the swordsmiths and bowyers for new weapons, or to have the ones they currently had upgraded. It was not an experience he imagined anyone could enjoy, and yet Mr. Schott had walked through it with skill and grace.

Finally, the four were summoned to the main area of the break room. In front of them were four mannequins.

“You first, Mr. Queen. After all, if you’re not impressed with my work on your suit, you won’t be impressed with what I do for anyone else.”

Seeing the logic in that point, he removes the curtain and immediately feels very impressed.

First, it was the color. His old suit had been midnight-black, because he needed it to be. Al-Sahim was supposed to be a phantom after all, a figure you never saw coming until it was too late. The Green Arrow would be the thing the corrupt would fear, but that the everyday citizen could look on to with some amount of admiration.

And this suit proved that. It was malachite-green with little hints of black and, in what Oliver knew was an attempt at humor, laurel-green. And as he held it in his hands, caressing it if he was being honest, he noticed that it felt hardier and stronger.

“Is this Kevlar, Mr. Schott?” Oliver asked.

“Oh no no, Mr. Queen. I would not put you in something as well-studied as Kevlar might be. What this is, Mr. Queen, is a mesh of Kevlar, special-forces level body armor, and something called Dwarf Star Alloy. Unless you are hit at close-range with an RPG, you will be able to survive it. Also, in appreciation of your particular type of work, I made sure this could survive bladed weapons or arrowheads. I used everything from classic European longbows to crossbows. In fact, that goes for everyone in this room. Does it meet with your approval?”

Nodding his head, interested intensely in the bow and arrows, Oliver waits for the next news.

“Now, the bow and arrow, Mr. Queen. As you requested, we made you a brand new compound bow. This one took a while. Currently, there are youth programs all throughout Starling City who are going to be able to teach Olympic-level archery classes with the bows and arrows we didn’t think were good fits. This bow is made of a proprietary blend of metals that, amongst other things, will never set off any metal detector. I figured with the life that you lead, Mr. Queen, it is eminently possible that you may have to suit up at a society dinner at some point. Quickly, to the arrows, before we move on to the rest of the team. Each one is both a regular arrowhead and a custom arrowhead. This quiver is, as you requested, capable of holding 60 arrows. We have arrows available for every need, both regular arrows as sharp as obsidian and trick arrows designed for every purpose you could think of or need. I made sure, also, that you wouldn’t have to worry about wondering if you were firing a trick arrow or a regular one. Your quiver has a small remote control attuned to your fingerprint. Take the time to read the manual and familiarize yourself with what each button releases. I think you’ll find that you were given some really interesting choices.”

Taking his bow and arrow over to a desk, reading the manual, Oliver tunes out the rest of the demo. He’s got some reading to do.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

“You, Ms. Lance, were an interesting choice. When designing your suit, and your weapons, it was made very clear to me, repeatedly, that you needed something that was distinctly feminine while still providing you with appropriate protection. Your suit, while being made with the same mesh that the rest of your team had their suits made with, is cut specifically to flatter you with extra tightness on your lower half while still enabling you to throw strikes with the same skill you did before. The mesh was modified to create fishnet cutouts around your legs and stomach, while still being capable of preventing any penetration from a bladed weapon. The color scheme is black and yellow, befitting the Swiss Frill canary that I believe your namesake to be based on. Unfortunately, you did not get a bow.

But we did supply you with both close-range and ranged weaponry. First, for close-range weapons, two escrima sticks made with carbon fiber. These sticks are collapsible and can easily be held in your purse. For your ranged weapon, we know how fond of your kanabo you were, but we wanted to give you something a little less brutal.”

And then, from the shadows, she heard it. A voice she didn’t really think she’d be hearing again so soon: “And so I gave you a Lunar Staff. Tied directly to the moon, it’s a staff made from a willow tree found only in the Hayabusa village and on either end are meteorite-ore maces held together by a retractable chain-link. It is truly an imposing weapon, much like another imposing weapon I was apparently not worthy of being informed of.”

Ryu Hayabusa was here, and he was NOT happy. But weirdly, he wasn’t focused on Laurel, or Nyssa, or even his student Thea. All of his attention was on Oliver. She imagined THAT was about to be a deeply unpleasant conversation.

(Nyssa Raatko’s POV)

As Laurel tested the balance on her Lunar Staff and escrima sticks, Nyssa realized he had made her suit too. At times like this, she wished Slade were here. He would have called this Winn Schott fellow “Q” and snickered when she didn’t know who that was. He also would have loved seeing her happy, seeing her with Sara Lance. At times like this, she desperately missed her brother.

“Ms. Raatko, I was eager to design your suit perhaps most of all. After all, the man who inspired it saved my life during the Battle of the Glades. It was his decision to stay back and defend the city while you three went looking for the Black Spider Clan that inspired my wife to do good in his example. So, I worked overtime to make sure you had the best of the best. I know you and Mr. Queen have found yourselves to be more comfortable with compound bows, but I also know you need a shorter bow with a lighter draw-weight. So here, with the aid of Moira Queen who was only all too happy to make this phone call, is a custom-made PSE Chaos AD Compound Bow with a 40-pound draw weight and a red-and-gold color scheme. Much like Mr. Queen, you will also get the same 60-arrow quiver with the same remote control for both obsidian-sharp arrows and trick arrows. While Mr. Queen’s arrows are fletched with green, yours are fletched with red and you have gold arrowheads. For your ranged weapon, I have given you the dual katana Slade Wilson wielded only with gold-and-red. I hope I’ve done a good job for you.”

(Thea Queen’s POV)

Smirking, Thea Queen stands in front of her mannequin and pulls the cover back to see… an utterly unchanged suit. Sure, she can tell that the proprietary mesh this Winn Schott made is in the suit but… everything else looks the same. Raising an eyebrow, Thea feels her heart sink when Winn Schott steps to the other side of him.

“You scare me, Ms. Queen. And because that’s true, I didn’t want to make any changes to your weapons for fear of having my hands broken.”

Sighing, knowing her threat had worked far better than she had wanted to, Thea walked over and smiled.

“Winn? Can I call you Winn? Look, I know what you’re doing here for us is great. And I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. We need to be a professional operation, and you are helping us do that. I am genuinely sorry we started on such a bad foot, and I’d like to remedy that if you let me.”

“Perhaps, Ms. Queen, we could start anew. But there is another reason I did not make any changes. These are top-notch weapons. Whoever did the work in this Hayabusa village are top-notch armorers and bowyers. Nothing I could have done would have improved on it. All that I did was refill your quiver with arrows fletched with sea-foam. The daggers were simply polished, as were your knockout darts. There is one change I did make to your suit. As you are our master ninja, your suit’s hood also has a top-down HUD so that you can easily see the blueprints for any building you are attempting to enter. Ms. Queen, I would very much like to see us forge a new working relationship. Let’s start tomorrow.”

Smiling, Thea grabbed her bow and headed over to her brother, his love, and their shared sister and talked shop over their weapons. It had been a good day, she thought, even if she was going to have to mediate an argument between her master and her older brother.

**_Meanwhile, in a high-rise in the Broadmoor neighborhood of Starling City…._ **

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(Carter Bowen’s POV)

It had been a long time since he had heard from Talia, or anyone with the Black Spider Clan if he was being honest. But that didn’t matter. He knew that what he wanted to get done, the pain he wanted to inflict on the Lances and the Queens, could be done all by himself. He had studied them all, been around them his whole life, and he knew how they thought of him. He was the annoying child, the one who reminded them all of their own failings and missteps. And now, he was the one who would be there to remind them that the heroes of this city were not judge and jury. They were not gods, as everyone believed them to be.

So, he would hurt them. He would break them, until he made sure they all confessed to what they truly were in their hearts. They were monsters, and killers. They were beneath him, and it was time the world knew that.

So, he decided, if he had to be something he’d be Prometheus. He’d make the world better, no matter what. No Matter What.


	10. You and I are destined to go to war

There were many changes in the life of Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance since they fell onto Lian Yu and were indoctrinated into the League of Assassins. But the one that their families had the toughest time understanding was not that their children returned to their lives as high-level martial artists and skilled combatants. Strangely, they could make themselves understand that. Them being devout Sunni Muslims wasn’t much of a problem, either. It just happened that there were prayer mats, and atomic clocks set to the pre-determined times for prayer, laid out at the Queen Manor and their secret base which was being called the Foundry for whenever anyone needed to pray.

Rather, the thing that took the most adjustment was the concept of Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance being THIS committed to each other. They had been in each other’s orbits, sure, but no one who knew them when could have imagined them being in love with each other to the intensity that they were now. That meant, of course, that they were going to always stick up for each other and have each other’s backs. It was a partnership that was forged in blood, molded into steel, and then hardened into a love that could handle anything. And as things tend to turn out, their love would be challenged, tested, like nothing had been before.

**_At the Foundry in the Prayer Room\Shooting Area…._ **

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(Ryu Hayabusa’s POV)

He could not BELIEVE what someone he thought of as an ally had just done. There was no reason at all for him not to have been informed that someone was walking around with the Dark Dragon Blade. It was the True Dragon Sword’s opposite number, and perhaps the most lethal sword in the world. What was more, the circumstances of its creation meant that any time it was removed from its crypt in the base of Mount Okuhotaka he would feel its calling, demanding a cosmic battle of the sort he was honor-bound to ignore.

So to be finished with shutting down an amphetamines ring in Tokyo and suddenly realize that, instead of needing sleep like you had planned, you felt a calling beyond your ability to resist that was drawing you to Narita International Airport was something he did not enjoy knowing. Then, to see that a battle is going on between someone he thought was an ally and his uncle who just happened to be holding the Dark Dragon Blade, that was the final insult.

So, questions needing to be answered, he took the plane to Starling City anyway, and found Oliver Queen. Lord knows, he wasn’t intent on making himself particularly hidden for someone who had Oliver’s set of skills. They needed to have this talk, to hash out what being a friend of Ryu Hayabusa really meant. Otherwise, it might be time for Ryu to start wondering if Oliver Queen and his confederates were his enemies.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He understood that Ryu was mad. He did not know why, but that was not the point. This was a thing Ryu had to get out of his mind. But before they could have the talk, an alarm buzzed on his phone. He knew they had been able to do the first 2 prayers with no incident, but now, he had to get started on the third. So, with a nod to Ryu Hayabusa, Oliver Queen began to pray. Having mastered the strictures of it with ease, he now used this time to think and to plan.

It was that blade. That multiple-edged katana Murai used to cut through his defenses, glowing crimson-red with every ounce of anger and hatred Oliver Queen could have ever mustered, that was the issue here. He supposed, if he were in Ryu’s position, he’d be mad that a weapon with the power that blade so obviously had could make its way into the city and he would be none the wiser. And as he finished his repetitive cycles of bows and prostrations for the third prayer of the day, and slowly pulled himself up to his feet, he knew what he would want to hear if he were in the shoes of the Dragon Ninja.

“Ryu, what WAS that blade? I have never seen its equal, and Murai used it to cut through every defense I had been taught in my studies” said Oliver, knowing he’d want to be informed before apologizing.

“That, Mr. Queen, was the Dark Dragon Blade. It feeds on evil, hatred, and fear. In short, if there is a negative emotion, this blade channels it and uses it as a battery. Currently, in your city, there is a lot of fear, and I am sure you hated Murai for confronting your sister in the manner that Murai did. Worse than that, though, only members of the Hayabusa clan have ever been able to defeat someone who was powerful enough to hold it. As my grandfather, Oda, explained to me the blades were both made from the same mine of steel ore. One was made by Masamune, and consecrated by 20 Shinto monks. This blade became the Dragon Sword, with the eye that was buried in the holy grounds of Mount Fuji making it the True Dragon Sword you saw during the Battle of the Glades. The other blade was cursed by Muramasa, and equally cursed by warlocks and evil spirits. That blade became the Dark Dragon Blade. The two blades call to each other, their powers locked in eternal conflict. Whenever someone wields the True Dragon Sword, the blade demands vengeance and the same is true for its opposite number. Do you now see why I wished you to call me when you saw it?” Ryu said, standing in perfect position to draw his blade should this question be answered wrong.

Seeing that, Oliver felt so guilty he could barely stand it. All he had thought about was protecting Thea, and because of that, he had allowed the most important skill he had to go unused: his mind. If he had been thinking clearly, he would have known the power of that blade, and realized that anything that mystically powerful was probably going to be something Ryu knew about.

“Ryu, I’m so sorry. I should have called you when I knew what this was, but I was too busy trying to save Thea that I never thought about anything else other than stopping Murai. I know now, with the benefit of hindsight, that you should have been by my side to make sure I could do it” Oliver says, smiling when the Dragon Ninja relaxes and bows.

“I had trouble defeating Murai when I first battled him, and to know that he arrived here to battle your sister, and my student, is not a thing I relish knowing. But if there was to be a battle, I am happy that my student had a warrior of your caliber alongside her. If the day should ever come when this blade reappears, I trust you will call me. Thank you, Mr. Queen, for what you tried to do. Now if you forgive my leaving so quickly, I must return to Japan. My work protecting my country, and closing all the doors that my uncle Murai has left open, might never be finished. Thank you for your understanding” and with that, the Dragon Ninja leaves.

(Ryu Hayabusa’s POV)

As he walks out, the Dragon Ninja cannot help but feel admiration for the professionalism of this setup. His weapons are usually picked up at safehouses throughout Tokyo or made by the armorers of the Hayabusa village, not forged by hand with the skill that this Mr. Schott managed. And even though his bow was a secondary weapon, not something he would use with the same proficiency as his katana, he could admire the multiple Olympic-level shooting areas set up here with live quality control areas to notice, and correct, any flaws in an archer’s technique.

As he was walking towards the door, he looks up and sees his student, Thea Queen, loading weights on an Olympic barbell before beginning a deadlift program. As long as he had been training people, teaching them the ways of the ninja as he had been taught, few showed more skill in understanding his lessons than this Thea Queen. While she was American in birth, in her soul beat the heart of a true warrior in the finest Japanese tradition.

And as he noticed her continuing to lift, he admired her dedication but also noticed how fit she was. The lifting of weights was nothing he prescribed for his student, but he could see now how it worked.

Instantly, he was unsure of how to take this. He had heard stories, tales loaded with heartbreak and regret, of what happened when teachers began to look at their students and feel attraction. There was nothing he would want less than to have to farm out Thea’s training to another, but he was beginning to feel an attraction for her. As much as a ninja could have a type, muscular women with a strong sense of honor was his.

What was he to do now?

**_Meanwhile, in the Little Korea section of Starling City…._ **

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(Detective John Jones’s POV)

It did not matter much if he had been at this for years. Decades, **_CENTURIES_** , wouldn’t have helped. Any cop who had been at this for longer than 6 months had a few cases that haunted them, kept them up at night and demanded some activity to keep the memories of it from hollowing them out. Some went to drinking, others to high-risk work in a SWAT unit, and others to even worse ends than that.

And, as he waited for his partner, he could tell, feel in his gut, that this was going to be one of them. Because the body in front of him wasn’t just dead, it had been desecrated. Eyes were gone, and replaced by…. were those coins? If so, what kind of monster would melt steel, and put them into a human person’s eye socket while the steel was still in the cooling process? The professional way that metal had melted and set made him think that this wasn’t the first time whoever had done this went down this path. With a great deal of horror, he realized he’d probably have to read in someone from the Special Crimes branch. Those guys were idiots, having spent too many years being tasked on nonsense jobs and generally not being the caliber of investigator he thought appropriate for a job like this.

What’s worse, he knew he’d be getting absolutely no help in finding who did this from the FBI bureau in Starling City. Everyone in law enforcement knew that the branch here was a punishment office, populated by burnouts and agents who asked too many questions of the wrong people. They barely were an office, and more like a collection of glorified private investigators who held guns and were just waiting to hit a fully vested retirement.

But as he looked closer at the body, his notions of being worried about getting help from the FBI faded into some deeply hidden recess in the corner of his mind. Because this woman was a stone-cold dead ringer for the recently returned to life Dinah Laurel Lance. Everyone knew her name, and her face. Even before she went on that island, and had been gone for five years, she was a fixture in the Starling City entertainment news.

This wasn’t a case of mistaken identity, that was clear now. Whatever else this was, this is also a message.

Dinah Laurel Lance has made a powerful enemy, he thought as he interviewed witnesses. All he knows is that he hopes she’s strong enough to deal with whoever it is.


	11. Practice Makes Perfect

There are many parts of the superhero life that aren’t exciting. Everyone imagines it’s adrenaline rushes one after the other, breaking up drug rings, stopping crime sprees, and engaging in glorious battles against villainous foes.

And some of that is true. But just as much of it isn’t. For the heroes who desire to run a professional outfit, a good bit of your time is spent doing things like making supply orders, repairing your weapons and suits after hard battles, and setting patrol schedules. It’s not exciting work, but it is intensely useful. The tales of people starting in this line of work, and quickly burning out because they weren’t prepared for the bookkeeping and maintenance, are legion. Just take (name redacted by legal department), for instance. He seemed to never have enough of the weapons or sparring time he needed, and before too long, he burnt out physically and mentally and ended up retiring from the vigilante life altogether.

But Oliver Queen, Laurel Lance, and Nyssa Al-Ghul had advantages. They had been members of an elite guild of warriors and assassins for five years, and as such, were used to waiting on things that were valuable. And they all knew that a quartermaster, someone who could set schedules and make sure they had what they needed when they needed it, was vital.

But finding the right person? Again, one of them would have to do the interview. And for Nyssa Al-Ghul, that meant she had the chance to train those skills. For her, it was like training pencak silat, or archery. If it was a skill, she could make herself master it. This was no different.

**_At the Bunker in an unused Queen Consolidated Steel Mill…._ **

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(Nyssa Al-Ghul’s POV)

They were leaving this all to her, she realized with some degree of amusement. Laurel had headed over to Lady Shiva’s dojo for sparring, as she and Laurel were so evenly matched that it was the best place for her to keep her technique sharp to the level that it needed to be. Oliver had a meeting with his mother about him taking a ceremonial role in Queen Consolidated so that he could be the hero they both knew the city needed, while still giving him access to the company’s bleeding-edge tech.

So that left Nyssa, the She-Wolf, to do all the work of interviewing the next person. Dr. Naomi Singh, with a dual PH. D in computer science and supply chain management from MIT and rumors of a far more… interesting life as Overwatch. If what her still-held sources in the black and gray markets were telling her was true, Overwatch was as feared behind a keyboard as she hoped their new trinity would soon become.

But this thing they were doing, this example they were trying to set, could not be about fear. While Nyssa was already quite proficient in the language of fear, being something of a polyglot in it, she also had forced herself to understand that it could only be used as a tool. This city also needed people who loved it to be at the forefront of saving it, and that was something Nyssa could do. Sure, it had taken her a while to see the value of this place but she had come to see why Oliver and Laurel loved it.

Starling City was a place of culture, where one could find a world-class theatre scene, classical music on par with some of the finest orchestras in the world, and fine art museums throughout the town. For Nyssa, who had always wanted to find a duality of life where she was not just an assassin, this was vital. And if this place, with its peculiarities, would be where she would become the best version of herself, she would do all that she could do to ensure that she could save it from harm. Also, and this she found just as important, it had Sara. Sara, who understood her need to see justice done and the knowledge that most times the police were simply outgunned against the kind of enemies they made. Sara, who could dance a classical Argentine tango with skill, speak comfortably about art and culture, and was going to college to become a history professor. In all the ways she needed, Sara understood her. This was her home. She would protect Sara’s heart.

Starling City, and being a hero, was the chance to declare independence from her past ways. Those who would seek her out, need her skills, would need a hero, an avenger. They would not be asking for a murderer.

So, bring Ms. Singh on. It was time to defend life, not just take it.

(Naomi Singh’s POV)

When she was a young girl growing up in Suriname, Naomi Singh fell in love with magic and more specifically the art of sleight of hand. It always thrilled her how someone could look at something in someone’s left hand and then be utterly flummoxed by what they saw in their right hand. But as she got older, she noticed other things, other magic tricks, that weren’t nearly as fun. Bribes in the open streets of the capitol, police ignoring actual crime in front of their faces, and inflation to the point of ridiculousness. She had to leave as soon as she was able. Being around corruption like that would only serve to harden her heart, and make her dreams impossible.

And Naomi Singh had BIG dreams. She wanted to become the tech world’s next big thing, and use her skills to help her country rise out of the pit. So, when she was lucky enough to win a scholarship to MIT, she vowed that she would not rest until Suriname was free to live its own destiny without corruption. And so, as she began to polish her skills in the world of computer science, she used what she learned to show her people what their leaders truly were. The filth, the rot, that their government fed on like a pig at the trough was in desperate need of cleansing. That had motivated her to get through college, to return home to her country and do the work her government needed her to do.

But when she arrived in America, she discovered that there was corruption here too. People living under enormous weights of medical debt, the justice system powerless to do anything about it. So, while at daytime she studied to become a computer scientist, at night-time she was a figure of something else. She was the one who would free people from their debts, give those working hard under an enormous weight a little relief. She wasn’t one of those people who didn’t believe in hard work. She had drug herself from Suriname to the United States, but she knew hard work wasn’t enough. People needed help. People needed justice.

So, when she got told that Laurel Lance’s sister was waiting for her at an abandoned steel mill, she got the sense she was in a whole bunch of trouble. Naomi knew, just like everyone did, that Moira’s only son Oliver was returning from the company, and was apparently preparing a bleeding-edge tech subsidiary that needed some “underutilized” voices from throughout the company.

But what she didn’t expect was to see the most striking woman she had ever seen in her life, tall and graceful like a panther, sitting in the middle of a conference room flipping what may have been the single largest knife that she had ever seen in her life into the air before it landed perfectly into the middle of an impossibly well-crafted wooden table.

“Hello, my name is Nyssa Raatko. We need your services.”

 ** _Meanwhile, at Lady Shiva’s secret dojo in University Hill_** ….

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She had needed this, she knew. Laurel’s skills, the martial arts that she learned in Nanda Parbat, were all in the service of being an assassin, a killer. But to do what she was being expected to do now, to be a hero who did not kill, would mean she would need to know more, to learn the difference between being an assassin and a hero. Even while knowing this she realized that she needed, demanded, a bigger challenge than what she would be able to find at one of the local dojos that dotted the city. For what she was expecting herself to become, to live up to the responsibilities that she had sworn herself to have alongside with Oliver and Nyssa, she needed a true challenge.

And that is why she was here. Everyone who traveled in her circles had heard stories of what Lady Shiva was, which is to say the best unarmed fighter in the world. If there was a story about some feat of tremendous martial-arts derring-do not heard outside of a wuxia story in China, it could well be believed that Shiva had done it. The legend of her skills, of how she had mastered every martial art until it was as though all her opponents were fighting a library in human form, had become like a boogeyman.

So, when it became clear that she needed to learn how to convert her newfound skills into a style that could be brutal, and capable of protecting the innocent from the wolves at the door, without being lethal there would be no one else, and nowhere else, she could think to go.

(Lady Shiva’s POV)

When she had gotten a phone call about this, she had cleared just about every student she had out of the place. The duel that was to happen here could not, should not, be viewed. Richard Diaz, her co-trainer and professional second, was here to call a winner should one be needed. But she doubted that would be the case.

Lady Shiva was not a fool. She knew what her reputation was. She had spent decades lovingly cultivating it, after all. What would be the point of all of that if she could not walk into any school in the world and have the students not quake in their feet upon seeing her? But in the blacker parts of the world, Al-Kanari’s name birthed an entirely similar reaction. If you were a trafficker, drug tycoon, or financier for the truly ghastly criminal underworld, you had **NIGHTMARES** about seeing Al-Kanari in front of you.

And to know now that Al-Kanari was coming here, seeking to learn, was an experience she did not want to have anyone share. They would battle, like the two great warriors they were, and when it was done, they would bow like respectful warriors. This was not a fight to the death. It was a battle between equals, a sparring session between two masters of their forms.

All the same, though, Shiva was planning on putting the bird down.

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As they stood on the middle of one of the sparring mats, Laurel in her black-and-purple suit made for her by Winn Schott while Lady Shiva is in a simple white karate gi, they nodded their heads at each other before Richard Diaz stated the rules.

“No permanent bruises. No throat, eye, or groin attacks. All other tactics are fair game. Session is over when one chooses to yield” said Richard Diaz, looking forward to this contest but knowing that some rules for it have to be kept up regardless.

Almost as soon as Richard Diaz leaves the mat, ringing a ceremonial bell, the sparring session began. It started slowly, with a range-finding session of leg kicks and jabs as both warriors tried to get their opponent’s timing down. Eventually, though, Laurel was the first to try something in the form of some acrobatic kicks that put Shiva in mind of the tiger style of kung fu only to find those blocked and countered with a wing chun block-and-strike sequence that was perfectly formless, showing its fundamental brilliance while also giving no sign at all to whoever it was that had taught her the technique. Not knowing what else to do Laurel blocked and rolled through every strike, walking backward as she went through her own wing chun forms and saw every blow of hers blocked. Taking a moment to judge each other again with new eyes, each woman realizing that the other’s black belts and feared reputation were something to be taken seriously, they again threw a flurry of roundhouse kicks, hook kicks, and leaping butterfly kicks all intended to be serious knockout blows. But they were either glancing shots slipped to prevent them being landed at full power, or blocked altogether. Realizing that wasn’t going to work, they began to dump the full weight of their nuclear-grade arsenals on each other, only to shamefully realize that wasn’t going to work either. Before too long, both women felt bruises setting in everywhere. Laurel realized, as her arms were beginning to ache, that she hadn’t done her wing chun shapes in too long and she was beginning to pay the price for that oversight.

For Shiva’s part, she could feel her shins swelling up as Laurel’s high degree of skill in Muay Thai meant she was having to block more and more leg kicks than she would have expected. This had to end.

So, Lady Shiva went for a blow she had only heard rumors of. But as she went for a 900-degree hook kick, she realized that Laurel was going for the exact same strike. They landed and threw their blows at the same time, and both landed knocking them out instantly.

(Ricardo Diaz’s POV)

He had to laugh. After that phenomenal display of martial arts talent that ended in a knockout, what else could you do but laugh? When they both woke up, he’d make sure they watched what actually happened. Since the point of this had been to learn, to get better, not to defeat the other on the field of open combat, this whole thing had been filmed. Each could learn where the mistakes they had made happened, and sharpen up their skills to close the openings.

But Ricardo Diaz knew one thing, one thing for sure: As much as he knew, as relentlessly as he trained, he would never, **_COULD_** never, be this good.

Stories of this day would never be told. It would be his secret, and he would take it to the grave. But oh my goodness, what a secret this would be.


	12. Too Hard To Ignore

Part of the trouble of being a superhero who relies on martial arts, instead of weaponry, to step in where the law leaves off is that any significant neglect of one of the arts you use means you’re less likely to be effective in them, and more likely to be forced to use increased brutality in the ones you have been keeping up on. Furthermore, when your entire reputation is that you are a fighter par excellence, having it suddenly discovered that you’ve grown lazy in your training is perhaps the worst thing that could happen.

It’s why every superhero worth a damn makes sure to keep up on their sparring in whatever way suits them. Wonder Woman found a local MMA gym in Los Angeles and routinely went in for unpublicized smokers throughout Southern California, desperate to learn as much as she could to keep her skills sharp. The Flash ran a track-style sprint program in the salt flats outside of Central City. But for the “core 4 of Team Arrow” they all worked with each other to keep each other on top of their game. But when one discovered that they were missing something, the other 3 knew to stay away. This lesson, like most others, came at a price.

**_At the Arrow Bunker……_ **

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(Winn Schott’s POV)

Laurel Lance had seemed like a fun person to be around. A little serious, and a lot Type-A, but still a generally decent person. And then that whole business with Lady Shiva had gone down, and it seemed like when she came back, someone had done the martial arts equivalent of pissing in her cornflakes on Christmas morning while setting her presents alight and then getting her evicted. Because when she came back, two things were different.

Firstly, there were ice packs strapped from her wrist to forearm. If he didn’t know any better, it would feel like she had walked straight back from the sparring session and decided to go right into training. To be sure, what Winn knew about martial arts could fill one of those tiny monopoly hats and have room left over. But what he was seeing here was less about Laurel using that polished wooden striking dummy, and her apparently being annoyed about whatever the results of her sparring session were. This was not ideal, but Winn was not dumb. He was not the one to try and get in between Laurel Lance and training when she needed to get some anger out. And then came the second thing.

With every thudding blow, and every wince and grunt of pain, Winn began to notice something. Somehow, improbably, Laurel was beginning to move faster. She was fighting through the pain, wanting to get her shapes mastered. As he glanced, behind his computers as he prepped new carbon-fiber arrows for Oliver with that tranquilizer cocktail he had shown some interest in, it almost looked like Laurel was slowly relaxing as she gritted her teeth and appeared to be promising herself to keep up with her shapes in perfect Arabic.

Once she was done with that, flexing her forearms, she sat in a corner and began to sing scales. It took him a minute to figure things out, but then he remembered that Laurel also happened to have that meta-human power of a sonic scream. When he remembered, the singing of vocal scales made an awful lot of sense. If you were going to train a power like that, you’d need a way to do it without just screaming all the live-long day. Practicing scales was a really good way to get it done.

This was a weird life he had, and yet fuller and richer than anything he could have imagined having before Kara came into his life. For most of his time before now, he was Winn Schott’s kid. The Toyman, scourge of Metropolis. So, he had to spend most of his life being better, SMARTER, to ensure no one ever saw him like that. For a long time it worked, but all the studying made him what he wanted to be: a nameless, faceless, nerd. Sure, he was bright and had figured out all the finer points of his major but no one knew what he was like. And then he met Kara, and all of it changed. A little bit at a time, he built his life. She was his role model, and soon, the love of his life. Without her, he would still be that nameless, faceless, nerd. With her though, here he was. Helping the hero who had inspired his heroine.

As he was thinking of what he would say about this to Kara, and working on arrowheads loaded with that tranquilizer cocktail Oliver had grown fond of, the computers began to ping to the point where they were vibrating. Because the notification software that Naomi Singh had set up was pinging someone’s name. It wasn’t Nyssa. She had spent the morning grumbling about getting a restaurant set up, pointing out that “if I just killed my suppliers now, I damned sure wouldn’t get caught on forensic evidence or cleanup” which Winn sincerely hoped was a joke.

It couldn’t be Thea, for that matter. Thea was at UW-Starling City for classes, and then had training at Lady Shiva’s dojo.

All that left was…. Oh god, here comes Oliver Queen. He didn’t want to be the one that told him the police were looking for him and Laurel Lance.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

It had been a long day at the offices. Mom had wanted to check him over for cuts, and then made him interview a doctor. Turns out, this had been a nightmare scenario for her. The thought of her only son, she explained to him in a voice brittle with emotion, bleeding out and her being powerless to do anything So, while Moira watched and caught up on paperwork, Oliver interviewed a nice and capable doctor named Henry Fyff. After explaining that he needed someone with skills in field medicine and triage, Henry was officially inducted into the team before Oliver left to head to his other job.

So, when Oliver walked in, he handed Winn a paper on medical-grade stationery of everything this doctor needed. Whistling as Winn took the note, read what it was, and then handed it over to Naomi Singh who immediately started making phone calls and orders from medical supplies stores, Oliver noticed that his team’s quartermaster looked pale.

“What is it, Mr. Schott” Oliver said, idly noticing that Naomi Singh was standing next to Winn with the same pale look on her face as Laurel finished black belt-level wing chun shapes and removed the ice packs serving as wrist guards of a type.

“The Starling City Police Department is looking for you. Apparently, they found a body who’s a dead ringer for Laurel.”

Could this day get any weirder?

**_At the Starling City Police Department…._ **

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(Detective John Jones’s POV)

There was a pall over this place without Quentin Lance. He could feel that if Detective Lance was still here, they’d have something. From everything he heard, there was no person better suited to finding that one loose thread, or wrongly-written document, in an entire box of files than Detective 1st Grade Quentin Lance. In a city where the police were either corrupt, or deeply under-skilled for the work they were tasked to do, the notion that someone who could be called “real police” was not here anymore. And from whatever information he had been able to glean it had been his death that was the spark upon which the Battle of the Glades was lit. It was, Detective 2nd Grade John Jones decided, a mark of how beloved he was that such a war, the war that had convinced the Justice Department to demand real reforms in the city’s police structure, could have happened because one detective had been assassinated with… an exploding arrow?

That reminded him of what the eggheads in the forensics labs had said about the metallurgic properties of the coins that had been put in that random woman’s eye socket. Apparently, it was from an arrowhead, specifically something custom-made from Japanese ore. It was not the sort of thing one bought at a sporting goods store, but rather something a professional archer might use. And then, he remembered.

During the investigation into Quentin Lance’s death, someone had noticed an archer on top of the Easley Bridge clad in midnight-black who fired an arrow into Quentin Lance’s gas tank. If he could get that arrow, John Jones got the sense a lot of his questions would be answered.

But what he did know? What he was sure of, in his bones and soul?

The Lances were in real danger. Whoever was targeting them had made a point of ensuring they’d never see it coming.

And as long as that was the case, he also knew that being just a police detective wasn’t going to be enough to stop whoever was coming for them.

What this situation really needed was… something else. And that something looked like it needed to be a _Martian Manhunter_.

**_Meanwhile, in an abandoned high-rise across the street from the SCPD……_ **

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(Carter Bowen’s POV)

In one of his more lucid moments, Carter Bowen knew that the revenge he wanted would, more than likely, burn down Starling City. He had gotten to Quentin Lance, but that hadn’t been enough. Laurel Lance, the woman who had inspired her father to live up to her example, was back. And from what Talia said, before she left to consolidate her power base in Japan, she was one of the three fighting on the rooftops of the McMillan projects. But that was not all she had told him.

Turns out Laurel Lance had joined up with Oliver Queen and were members of the League of Assassins, and had been fighting on that roof before everything went to hell. So, despite how well-schooled he knew he was, a frontal assault against them both was a bad idea. Knowing that, he needed a plan. He needed to set a trap, and it needed to be slow and deliberate enough that by the time they noticed what was happening, it would be too late.

That was part of why he had used the arrowhead trick. They weren’t arrows he was using anymore, as they were an old stash from his first dry run as a servant of Talia Al Ghul. Besides, if they ever figured out that those arrows weren’t in circulation, it wouldn’t matter. Because, he decided, if Laurel Lance got to have a partner, so did he.

And at this point, his partner walked into the room sharpening a dao from the Tang Dynasty. Prometheus’s use of a katana was down to his training, and what he felt most comfortable with, as the use of the dao was down to his partner’s.

“Have they figured out anything, my love?” Mei Gulong asked, sharpening her dao and grabbing a longbow.

“Nowhere close. But just in case, let’s put our enemies through their paces.”

And at that, Prometheus began to smile.

Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance were doomed. It was only a matter of time before they figured that out.

**_Meanwhile, at a Korean barbecue place near the Queen Consolidated Steel Mill…._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Once they had left the steel mill, Oliver had made a call to the SCPD explaining that both he and Laurel would come to interview and provide any information they could to assist with whatever the investigators might need. In the back of Oliver’s mind, though, he began to smell a rat. He had read enough Greek history in the libraries at Nanda Parbat to figure out that this was a sign, a threat from someone. But who? The Black Spider Clan had been driven out of Starling, and were currently holed up licking their wounds in Japan. Besides, if any of the cells had been activated, Ryu would have told them.

Besides, they had killed Genshin. The clan was leaderless, powerless, and in no way a threat to them. Whoever this was, whoever was looking to get their attention, had decided to live in the shadows and play on historical boogeymen.

Waiting for their Uber, though, Oliver suddenly felt on high alert. Sure, working in this neighborhood meant you were more likely than normal to see people walking in hoodies with their heads down. This wasn’t Miami, after all, so it was perpetually cooler and rainier than the rest of the country. But there was a functional difference between seeing a swarm of hoodies in a neighborhood, and suddenly realizing that said swarm was coming towards you.

And as they came closer to him, surrounding him in what he could tell was a classic triangle formation, he realized that he had underestimated the resilience of the Black Spider Clan. Because these hooded men were not hiding their true affiliation. These were the remnants of the Black Spider Clan’s cell in Starling.

Faced with this information, Oliver Queen glanced at Laurel Lance and they nodded their heads together. And then, they ran like hell.

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This was not, at all, because they were afraid to fight. Rather, they were ITCHING to do something other than train. Instead, if it was clear that Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance had mastered as many different martial arts as they both had, that would cause questions to be asked that neither of them had any really good answers to. So, they ran… to a nearby alley. There, where they were pretty sure no one could watch them, Oliver and Laurel got to work. Oliver in a traditional Northern-style hard stance, and Laurel in a dragon-style kung fu stance. In moments, they were attacking with brutal kicks and heavy punches until there was no one left but one initiate.

Grabbing him by his hooded sweatshirt, Oliver quickly landed a spinning side kick to the abdomen while Laurel held him there, as Oliver made a phone call.

“Your grace, I have another member of the Black Spider Clan who can be interrogated. I await any information you may be able to acquire.”

With that, Oliver hits a textbook hurricane kick before leaving him there to be picked up by the League. Whatever their plans are, Oliver realized one thing: If they wanted to protect their city, they needed to get ready…. FAST.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, John Jones is our Supergirl variant. You'll see more cameos from different parts of the universe coming up soon. Enjoy.


	13. The Debut

Making enemies in the world of heroism isn’t uncommon. But to make true lifelong ones, ones that define everything you want to do and become, is a different matter. The Flash has Eobard Thawne. Wonder Woman has Cheetah. Batman has the Joker. And for the Green Arrow and Black Canary, as they soon discovered, they would have enemies of the same sort that would live with them for good. They would push them to their breaking points, deliver losses they thought would break them for good, and sharpen their skills to surgical precision. In quiet moments, Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance would admit to hating these enemies. After everything that had been taken from them, everything that they had lost, why wouldn’t they? And yet, they also knew that those enemies had been a boon. They had forced them to grow up, to mature and be the heroes that those they had lost would have wanted them to be.

All they knew, all that mattered, was that they were tasked with being something more than themselves, something BETTER. It started with those enemies.

**_At the Arrow Bunker…._ **

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(Naomi Singh’s POV)

One of the first things that she had done in her new role as “tech support” for this quartet of people wanting to be heroes was put audio-visual GPS tracking in everyone’s phones. Lord knows, she did not want to be the one to have to explain to Moira Queen why it was that her son, and daughter possibly, would have been kidnapped and she had no idea where they were. That did not seem ideal for either her life, or career, prospects.

And so, when Oliver and Laurel left to go and keep their appointment at the Starling City Police Department’s University Hill precinct, Naomi turned on their GPS tracking and the intelligence-quality microphones she had placed inside their iPhones. So when she heard Oliver and Laurel be forced to fight off the Black Spider Clan, she quickly sent out an all hands on deck alert to Nyssa Al Ghul, Thea Queen, and the rest of the support staff. Oliver and Laurel would be here soon, and their minds would be clouded by anger.

It would be up to this collection of tech support people, and highly-trained fighters, to draw their two leaders back to themselves. Because if they weren’t, if they could not focus themselves and felt that red mist descend, they’d be useless. To themselves, to the people they loved, and to the city. That could not stand.

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

He could hear himself and Laurel both cursing in Arabic as they walked back into the bunker, but it was like he was looking outside of himself. The Black Spider Clan, enemies of the League, had decided to attack him and his love personally. Had word not gotten back to them? Had they not been informed? Or was this what he feared it to be, a grave insult to his honor and a challenge of sorts?

Oliver knew this was childish, and not befitting a warrior of his caliber, to be so blithely concerned with what was, if it proved to be true, a street-level insult by a clan he had long since bested. But there was a part of him, the part that was still the child raised by Robert and Moira Queen, who had been made to understand that there is nothing more important than making sure your family name remains strong, and free from slander and dishonor. So to understand that there were people in Starling City, even if they were not from here, who believed that his name could be challenged in this manner was something he did not want to abide.

Walking into the room, Oliver threw off his suit jacket and grabbed a finely-honed compound bow that was kept here as a practice bow before grabbing a quiver of arrows and shooting bullseye after bullseye. And after he landed the last one, he felt his anger fade. This was a weakness, he knew, and he would not become everything that he would need to be if he allowed it to control him.

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She wanted to scream. Not in the traditional muttered Arabic curses she was good at usually, curses so ferociously venomous that they sent even Nyssa’s eyebrows raising. No, for how she was feeling right now, she wanted to **_CRY_**.

She knew, logically, that doing something like that would be more trouble than the momentary release of fury would be worth. But the damned Black Spider Clan had taken so much from them already. Their personal hitman had already killed her father, and plunged her mother and sister into this life. How much more did they want to take? How much more did they think they were **_ENTITLED_** to take?

But, as she saw Oliver visibly force himself to calm down with the aid of some expert target shooting at a bullseye, she knew she needed to do the same. But, while Nyssa had worked with her some on archery in the arabian style, it never relaxed her. She could see, logically, why it worked for Oliver. The focus required to aim an arrow, steady it, and fire it exactly where it was supposed to go steadied him. For her, though, Wing Chun did that. The shapes were rote, she could do them in her sleep.

But, much like shooting arrows did for Oliver, the routine was the point. She could just focus on doing the shapes, on making her hands do the blocks, counters, and strikes to precision. And as she finished the last routine, she exhaled and felt like herself.

But what to do now? Where to go next?

(Nyssa Raatko’s POV)

At times like this, Nyssa understood what her true role in this confederacy was. in the field, even though Oliver and Laurel were taking their sweet time preparing themselves to do so, she was the one who was the field general. Oliver and Laurel just did not have the ability to call the shots, and keep to their previously-created plans of attack, with the skill that Nyssa did. They did not take this as an insult, but rather a statement of fact. Nyssa Raatko, when there was a battle afoot, could keep her head when all around her could not.

But in the bunker, when they were training, she would be the same thing. She would be the sober head who saw what her partners could not, so they could focus on what mattered.

And reight now, in this moment, she saw what they needed to do.

“Oliver, Laurel. You need to meet with the constabulary. We will remain here, and find out what we can about the Black Spider Clan’s return. But you must keep your appointments. To not do so creates a whole different set of questions, ones that you cannot answer. Thea, I, and our associates will handle things while you are gone. Please go” she said, with all the focus and calm she could muster.

She was worried about her friends, and what this attack would do to them, but they needed her to be dispassionate and provide them with the best advice that they could have.

But what Nyssa knew, as she watched them leave, was that if the Black Spider Clan really was back in town, the She-Wolf, and Artemis, would be hunting them down.

What had been done here today, and the slander towards both Oliver and Laurel’s reputation as well as that of the League of Assassins, could not be countenanced.

**_Meanwhile, at the Starling City Police Department….._ **

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(Detective 2nd Grade John Jones’s POV)

There was something he was noticing about Dinah Laurel Lance. Not enough to put it into words, or a name to it, but still something.

For one, she didn’t seem alarmed in the slightest that an apparent serial killer was out there dropping the bodies of people who resembled her. That was new. Normally, if someone were to be told they were the apple of a serial killer’s eye, they’d be literally vibrating with fear and shock. But not her. Instead, this looked like she was being told about some unpaid parking tickets. What had that island done to her?

It had taken him longer than he would have admitted to remember that the woman in front of him was a castaway on a deserted island in the South China Sea for five years, and had returned with her boyfriend to Starling City just months ago. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t see what was in front of him, now that he knew what it was that he was looking at.

It was the way in which she moved and walked that was the first clue. From what he had gotten on background, Dinah Laurel Lance wasn’t much of a fighter or athlete before the island. And now, if you didn’t know any better, it would not be out of the realm of possibility to assume that she was a trained martial artist since birth, and an Olympic-level gymnast besides that.

The mystery in front of him, the one he didn’t know he had to task himself with solving, was this. How to make someone see a threat when it turned out they might be the bigger one?

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She was only half-listening to what this detective was saying. If it had been her father, gruff and yet unmistakably direct, she would have heard him and given what information she could. But considering that she, and the League, had done more work investigating what happened with her father’s death than the police had it would be fair to say that she wasn’t all that interested in whatever they were doing. Besides, she was working her own investigation on this. If she had to guess, someone they had missed was playing a misdirection game.

So she wasn’t really paying attention. But then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw it. It was on every precinct house’s wall throughout the United States. It was the FBI’s most wanted list.

And at the top, accused of wire fraud, bank fraud, racketeering, and several different forms of insurance fraud, stood one of their own: Adam Hunt. A truly loathsome character who flaunted his money, and his vacation houses in the South of France and in Bali, around a city that was under-educated, under-funded in all manner of public works, and overflowing with drugs, human trafficking, and corruption until it almost came out of City Hall’s throat.

It was like, she would say later, walking into a dark room and turning a light on. They had wondered, **_WANTED_** , a way to go out into the field. Adam Hunt, and delivering him to real justice, would be that way.

So, with a glance towards her love, they excused themselves politely and headed back to the bunker to plan.

**_Back at the Bunker….._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

There were things Winn Schott could simply not be allowed to do with his weapons.

For one, and this point had been made by every member of the quartet who called this place home, all katana here were to be sharpened **only** by the warrior who wielded it. It was not even that Oliver didn’t trust Winn, but rather, it was a thing he could do, and had done, since the first time that he picked up a katana and was taught the finer points of using it.

Secondly, all of this was to be done by hand in the old traditions. He could not envision watching some machine, some thing that did not know the feel of a blade, working to sharpen his weapon when he could do it himself. He would sharpen it himself until it was where he wanted it, and then he would polish the blade until it gleamed.

But it was not just tradition that made him take these paths. It was a thing he could do with Nyssa, that only they understood. Every sharpening of the blade, every polishing of it until it gleamed like a diamond in the moonlight, was a way of paying tribute to Slade.

It had been Slade who had showed him these ways, imparted upon him the traditions of treating your katana as a representation of your very soul and loving it with that same intensity. Every day, it remained intensely clear to him how Oliver wished Slade could be here, see what they had built in his honor. It would have filled Slade with pride to see Nyssa wearing his colors, using his weapons, and following his example to be the pit of fear in the chest of all those who did wrong. And this simple act, these hours spent polishing blades and sharpening them, was Oliver and Nyssa’s way of thanking him for what he had done.

Slade had been the one who had guided Oliver through those first painful weeks and months when the grief over losing his father hit him all at once, reminding him of his own pain over losing his wife in childbirth and teaching Oliver to honor his father’s memory instead of raging against his loss. It had been Slade, Oliver knew, who had worked with Nyssa to be warmer, less coolly professional when she was not in the field.

They would go out soon, and bring someone to justice. But right now, in this bunker, they would say thank you to the man who helped to make them the people they were. There weren’t words for this, not really.

But there were actions. And it was time to do them.

**_That night, at the William F. Devin Federal Building….._ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

She had never been as close to Slade Wilson as the rest of her found family had been. But she knew, even now, that they would be doing this first mission, and all the rest of them, to honor him.

Slade had been Oliver’s big brother, and Nyssa’s “work husband”. Those relationships were deep, and built through struggle and blood. But her relationship with Slade was different, more like peers than the familial kind. Yet, despite that, she still loved him deeply.

How, though, could she pay tribute to him? And then, as they all stood on the roof, she remembered. It was a trick she had developed, but never told anyone other than Slade about. If he was here, she knew, he’d be reminding them of what the rules of engagement were. So, standing up, she did what he would do. In his voice.

“Alright, guys, across the street are a room full of highly-trained mercenaries from the Balkans. We’ve fought these men before, and we’ve beaten them all. But tonight, we will not kill them. We will make their presence in this life expensive, and not worth the trouble, but we will not end them. These are people with families, people who would be missed if they were gone, and we will not create that pain. On your feet, muppets. We have a job to do.”

And with that, off they went across the building. Arrows flew, kicks were thrown, and katanas were unleashed for non-lethal cuts. It was a quick night’s work, and when it was done, Adam Hunt was tied up and a call was placed to the FBI.

As debuts go, it could not have gone better.


	14. A Question of Honor

Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance, it has been said, would have been perfect as the leaders of a shared clan in the warring state, or Sengoku Jidai, period of Japan’s history. It was true, yes, that their old life was as assassins. But even there, when the chance for dishonorable kills were plentiful, they rarely took them. As they understood it, it was not dishonorable to outsmart your opponent, to set a trap for him to walk into of his own free will. What was dishonorable was to be cruel.

Ending a wounded and defeated man’s suffering was to be better, to be worthy of the rich lineage of assassins and ninja that they considered themselves inheritors of. The times that they demanded a satisfactory punishment for some young initiate who left a target to gurgle blood, and die slowly, made sure that everyone knew the distinction. But once they left that order, and could do things their own way in their own style, they ascribed to a different sense of honor. Theirs was now bushido, the way of the warrior. They would battle, on open ground and face-to-face, for justice.

But, while they and their confederates endorsed a classical style of honor, not everyone they encountered carried themselves with the same strictures.

**_At the Merlyn Global offices in Vietnam…._ **

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Malcolm Merlyn had always been adaptable, able to see a situation and figure out the best escape valve whenever things got too hot. He supposed that was in the blood. After all, how is it that a family business started by his great-grandfather repairing calculators and watches in the diamond district into a multi-national tech conglomerate with multiple government contracts and billions of dollars in revenue. And it was, at this moment, that adaptability that was keeping him alive.

He knew the Black Spider Clan had marked him for death after what he had done in the Battle of the Glades. To be honest, he expected that. One did not draw a sword on Talia Al Ghul and think a verbal threat would be the end of the response. Just as much, though, he knew he had to do it. Ryu Hayabusa was a child, but in this, he showed the maturity of an adult. Genshin deserved better, had been too good of a warrior, to be treated in the way he was by Talia.

He would, he knew now, serve Genshin’s ways, be his champion. And if that meant going into war against Ryu Hayabusa, he would. All he needed to do that was tools. He would need a bow of the highest caliber, and a katana to match it. Lucky for him, he had an entire company’s resources to plunder for this work.

But that left him with another quandary: What to do about Oliver and Laurel? He imagined they held some level of contact with Ryu Hayabusa, even as they would be fighting their own battles now. He had taken his time, and used all his skills, charm, and gifts of intimidation, to get informants throughout anywhere he could think of use for them. And having someone who reported to him inside Nanda Parbat was eminently useful. Knowing that Oliver Queen, Laurel Lance, and especially that fearful demoness Nyssa Al-Ghul had been released from their burdens would be good information to have.

They would be heading home to Starling City, he knew that. They had been conscripted into the League’s ways, and shown themselves to be faithful servants of it, but they would want to save their home. It had been his Undertaking, incomplete and coarsely delivered as it was during the Battle of the Glades, that had shown them just how much work needed to be done on that front. While they attempted this miracle, for all the good it would do, he would leave them to it. For the foreseeable future, as he learned how to fight as a ronin would, he would leave his home alone.

He had, after all, bigger battles to fight.

**_Meanwhile, back in Starling City…._ **

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

It had been odd to hold the blade he had used during the League of Assassins; the whole time having sworn a sacred oath to no longer assassinate as he had done once. To be sure, the katana he had used was a legacy blade, passed down to the archers in the League’s elite guard since the days of the Tokugawa shogunate. Made in the classic Japanese style mastered by Masamune, it was a truly fearsome weapon. And in the old traditions of it being tested first on rolled-up straw mats, and then on slabs of beef, it turned out that the katana was a 5-body blade, named because it would be capable of cutting through 5 human bodies with a single strike.

For most, this would be a prized weapon, a holy thing. But for Oliver, it was a reminder of a person he never wanted to be again, doing things he never wished to be doing. But he also knew he needed a blade. He felt naked, less prepared than he liked, without a weapon. So, what to do? And then, he decided.

In this, he would kill two birds with one stone. He would teach Winn Schott the value of tradition, of doing things in the old ways, while at the same time giving him a task worthy of the skill he had shown. He very much got the sense that Mr. Schott would look forward to making his own variant of the grandly-made katana. He held no illusions about the idea that Mr. Schott would be an equal to Masamune, or Hanzo, but he would be interested in seeing him try.

He could not dwell on it, though. Laurel would be arriving from work shortly, and they had a date.

(Winn Schott’s POV)

He was going to make a katana for the Green Arrow. Since he graduated college, and became the weapons man for Team Arrow, this was the thing he had prepared for, and dreamt about. He had studied the work of Masamune, and Hanzo, and all the other great swordsmiths throughout time. And now, with some care and time, he thought there was a chance his name could be amongst those legends.

But he could not be arrogant, he thought, as he put a list of supplies he needed together. This was a weapon that a true hero was going to use to defend his city from those who were polluting it, and so it had to be of the highest quality.

Oliver Queen deserved nothing less.

**_Meanwhile, at the Jewel of the Mediterranean……_ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Ever since they had been brought back to life, Laurel Lance had not wanted to go back to the law. Five years providing justice above and beyond whatever it was that a prosecutor could do had colored her opinion of justice in a way that meant she could never really look at a courtroom the same way. Plus, her ethics and honor would not, _COULD NOT_ , make it so that she would willingly walk into such a hallowed place and try cases knowing that she was breaking the law.

So, she used what she knew, and what Nyssa had taught her, and took a job working for Nyssa as a sous chef. It had started small, chopping onions, preparing garnishes and the like, and above all else intimidating suppliers into making sure everything got to the little 10-seat pan-Mediterranean restaurant her soul sister owned. She called it the Jewel of the Mediterranean, because it reminded her of her days and nights in Santorini getting the real sense that this is what her true life should have been. 

The place was small for a reason, but with time, it became a hidden gem in the Glades. Nyssa, after all, hired from the neighborhood. She paid a living wage and then some, and made sure all employees who beat their probation period had top-of-the-line insurance.

And, sometimes, she closed the restaurant early. Her sous chef had a date. And so, as it turned out, did the owner.

**_A few hours later, in University Hill at Starling City Laser Tag and Archery…._ **

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{Sara Lance’s POV)

As first dates go, this was nowhere near what she was expecting. But somehow, as she thought of it, it fit.

Nyssa and Oliver were both world-class archers, capable of making any shot in the book with ease and aplomb. They had been the sniper force on just about every major mission that the League of Assassins had assigned them on for 5 years.

And yet, despite their equal skills, they had never found out who was better. They had never even questioned it, because they never needed to. Surviving, living through another day, was more important to them than any competition could ever be.

But now, with the freedom of knowing they weren’t constantly going on raids against the true worst of the criminal world? It was time, Sara thought with a happy grin, to find out who was the better shot. Her girlfriend, or her soon-to-be brother-in-law.

Sara was not a fool, not even in the slightest. She could tell that Oliver and Laurel were going to be married before too much longer now, and she was quite interested in seeing if there would be a day when that happened with her and Nyssa.

But that was far off in the future. Right now, she thought as that happy grin on her face never left her, it was time to answer a question that she had wondered. This was going to be fun.

(Nyssa Raatko’s POV)

There were times where Sara Lance’s youthful spirit reminded her of who she had always wanted to be. She was light-hearted, and found things like what they were doing fun. Besides, this would be a good way to keep everyone’s situational awareness sharp. As low-stakes as this “laser tag” was, it was a way to ensure people developed, and kept sharp, their instinct for feeling where someone was and quickly prepared to draw their weapons and fight seriously.

Besides, if she was being honest, a small part of her did wonder. Who was the better shot? They were both archers of the 1st quality. Nyssa had trained in the classic Persian style, and Oliver had studied in the Japanese, Korean, and Chinese styles. But it hadn’t mattered. They had just needed tight grouping, and sharp arrows. This was a question they had never conceived of, but now that Sara had asked, Nyssa discovered that she wanted to know.

Let the games begin.

A few minutes later….

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(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Oh sweet god, it was the Ibiza thing all over again. Pulsating loud music, flashing lights, and him somehow trying to make it seem like he didn’t have a compound bow as he tried to make his way to the rafters to hit a shot some **_OLYMPIC ARCHERS_** would find personally challenging. And, unlike last time, he didn’t have Nyssa running distraction by being so utterly beguiling that the mark couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He did have Laurel though, and in the moment, that would be enough.

Whenever Nyssa had to be off somewhere else, planting a tracker or meeting a fence, it had been Oliver and Laurel who worked to get the job done. Her near-boundless martial arts skill and his ability to read a room and find the weak spots for entry meant that they could figure out pretty much any obstacle. And right now, despite the fact his quiver was loaded with foam arrows and Laurel was on the floor in a light-up vest, it felt like normal. After all, if you wanted someone to raid an enclosed location and get out with no one being the wiser, Oliver Queen and Dinah Laurel Lance were probably at the top of the list for getting that done.

So, as he skulked across the rooftop in this place looking for a nest to plant himself and get to work, Ollie began to think. He would always be doing this, he realized. A life spent learning the martial virtues, of teaching and training even when his body could no longer act, was a life he now realized was fuller than anything he would have known before his time with the League.

And, he realized, he would always have Laurel. Anything he did, whether it was teaching the various forms of archery he had learned or simply being a kind ear to the next generation, would be easier, better, with Laurel in his life.

And then, he saw it. A little flash of Japanese steel, and even as he nocked a foam arrow in his bow, he smiled. Only Nyssa would be able to sneak a short sword in here, with a classic handle, and carry it in her purse like most people carried a phone.

Firing, he knew he had her. He just knew it.

(Nyssa Raatko’s POV)

Child. For all she had taught Oliver about archery, for all the hours she had spent teaching him how to draw quickly and worked on his speed until he could fire an entire quiver’s worth of arrows in a minute, he still, in this moment, forgot the most basic lesson that any good archer had to learn.

You had to lead your target. Without even looking, glancing at Sara with a smirk in her eyes, she simply pulled out her trusty Japanese short sword called a tanto and cut the arrow flying at her head in twain perfectly while still keeping her eyes on her date.

“He still has much to learn, Ms. Lance. Now, where would you like to go for a 2nd date?”

(Oliver Queen’s POV)

Well that was a trick he didn’t know Nyssa had in her bag. And then, almost in milliseconds, he knew where he made the mistake and he could have kicked himself.

He hadn’t led Nyssa anywhere. He had fired a shot at exactly where she was, and thought she wouldn’t think of a counter. At this point, he knew, Nyssa would have tracked him. Even though she had rented a poor excuse for her own perfectly-made bow from some pimply-faced kid behind a counter, she still had the mind of a truly gifted archer. And that, perhaps more than whatever bow she happened to have, made her someone he would always be proud to have on his side.

It was weird for him to have introspective thoughts such as this in the middle of a duel. But as he thought about it further, this was a sparring session. And in a sparring session, when your mind was not on life or death matters, he could value his closest friend’s skills and her deep friendship. It had been Nyssa, more than even Laurel, who had shown him the warrior he could be. If Laurel reminded him of the lightness and hope within him, Nyssa was the harbinger of his skill. His city deserved the best defenders it could have, and Nyssa would never allow him to be at anything other than his best.

Thinking of that gave him an idea, one which made him smile.

(Sara Lance’s POV)

 **OH MY GOD**. That was, without a doubt, the single sexiest thing she had ever seen.

Sure, Nyssa was attractive. You could just tell, even though she covered herself up and didn’t flaunt her natural beauty even in the slightest. But, as she understood now, there was a difference between attractiveness and sex appeal.

And seeing Nyssa, jet-black hair tied up perfectly in a ponytail, calmly remove a dagger from her purse and split an arrow in half without ever seeing it, was showing her the difference like someone shining the light in a dark room. Right then, she knew.

If Nyssa would have her, Sara would be her bride. She would ride with her until the end of days, and battle alongside her no matter where Nyssa’s wars took them. The Orange Dragon was still new, still finding her place as a vigilante. She could do worse, BE worse, than to be Nyssa Raatko’s pupil and partner.

And she realized now that asking her love, and her love’s closest compatriot, to duel for her entertainment was cruel. She supposed they were carrying on with this out of enjoyment now, but she needed to let her know that any other reason was not necessary.

“Nyssa? If you are doing this for entertainment, or to find an answer to a question you had never asked yourself, I understand. But if you are continuing with this to please me, you do not need to. Your company is all I truly need” said Sara, fondness in her voice.

(Nyssa Raatko’s POV)

Nyssa was thinking about this match, now. Did she really want to know if she was better than her finest student, and the best archer she had ever trained? Was knowing the answer that important to her?

She realized, with a start, that she didn’t really need to know. So, she stood up in the middle of the room, and announced in perfectly clear Arabic that she yielded. There were bigger threats in the world, and they needed everyone to be on the same page.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're curious about who I think would have won if Nyssa actually wanted to find out, message me. I'll tell you my answer.


	15. A Hunter And Two Birds

Oliver Queen and Laurel Lance took it as a source of great pride that their families were supportive of their life choices since they were marooned on Lian Yu. They had become people, in every way one could imagine, that they were SURE no one would recognize when they finally were allowed to return home. They were black belts in multiple martial arts, world-class archers, and master detectives. And still, despite all those changes, their parents and those who loved them before the changes still treated them in the same way.

Sure, those differences made life much more interesting now. (Dinah and Nyssa were fond of each other in a way that made everyone who remembered Quentin smile at thinking of them becoming friendly.) But none of them would have changed how much richer everyone’s lives were for having these new versions of Oliver and Laurel around.

**_At Wildcat Muay Thai and Kickboxing Gym in the Glades……._ **

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(Dinah Drake-Lance’s POV)

Dinah Drake was middle-aged. Sure, she was in tremendous shape for being middle-aged, but she was still middle-aged. The trouble was that there were enough threats to her life that she needed to start training, and fighting, again to be the one to hold them off.

Honestly, if Quentin was still here, there was a 50-50 chance that they would have just gone into WITSEC and that would have been the end of that. Sure, it would have hurt Sara, and they would have never known Laurel was alive in the flesh, but she figured they would have understood eventually why it was her parents felt like the city couldn’t keep them safe anymore. But, and it always brought fresh tears to her eyes to think of it, Quentin WASN’T here. Talia Al-Ghul, and whatever archer she had hired to do it, made sure of that.

And since that was true, she would have to fly one more time. Until Talia was broken, she could not rest. But that caused a problem.

Lady Shiva, for as undeniably skilled as she was, did not necessarily give off the immediate sense that she was the sort of person who would be patient with someone coming off a forced hiatus as long as Dinah’s was.

From everything Laurel and Sara had said over the family dinners they still had, Shiva was inflexible and compassionless even with them. And they were in peak physical condition, having spent years doing nothing BUT training. What she would need, then, is someone who could understand her need for a slower-paced return to active martial arts, and more non-contact teaching.

And if she was going to be taught by someone like that, Ted Grant seemed to be the guy. When she was the Canary, Ted Grant was Wildcat. They went out on patrols together, nothing above street-level work keeping the city safe. In the shadow of the Undertaking and Quentin’s death, things felt different.

For one, the city that used to be run and governed by street gangs now had ninja orders popping around in it. It meant that they were less worried about firearms and more worried about people with swords, throwing stars, and ancient Japanese bows. She wasn’t ready for this yet, and she knew it like she knew her own name, but she imagined there would come a day in the not-too-distant future where she’d be drug to UW-Starling City and expected to sit through a full lecture on the differences in technique between all the major archery differences.

But for right now, as Ted Grant rolled out carts loaded with bandages, aspirin, and what looked like 4 decade’s worth of books and videos on everything she had missed, she was glad she wasn’t fighting. Because before she could, she needed to learn more first. But she wasn’t going to complain, or stop. This wasn’t for herself, not really. From the time Sara and Thea had shown up and told her what happened to Quentin, her mission had been clear ** _. REVENGE._**

Quentin’s memory demanded she be more, be better, than she had been. For the man she had always loved, she would honor him in the way he deserved. 

**_Meanwhile, at the foundry on Warner and Galloway…._ **

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(Nyssa Raatko’s POV)

At times like this, she wished she was more outwardly emotional. Because if she was, she would hug Oliver and Laurel for taking her with them. Ever since she had arrived in Starling City, and opened a pan-Mediterranean restaurant, her public and private lives were thrillingly loaded with action. For one, her restaurant had become a jewel in the Glades. Just the other day, the food critic from the Starling City Galaxy had shown up to try her food. (He had tried to sneak in without her knowing, but his effort was almost **cartoonishly** amateurish. If this had been filmed, there were children in the League of Assassins who would have been able to catch him.) Apparently, listening to her waiters tell it, they were going to have to sincerely consider adding more seats and staff after this. This pleased her. She wanted to cultivate a way out, a pressure valve to release the tremendous weight that the poverty of the city had created.

And even months after the Undertaking, the Glades were still deeply poor and under-populated. This was a major American city, not some town in Central Asia where you did not expect growth because it was too cold and not enough of the things a society needed could be found. She had been to places like that, seen what poverty and lack of resources could do. Places like that were petri dishes for murderers, people who did not value life in their hearts.

Furthermore, she was beginning to get the sense that things weren’t going as poorly in the other parts of the city as they were here. Her suppliers delivered to the Starling Ports, and made her always go and pick things up there in refrigerated trucks instead of delivering to her restaurant directly. Apparently, from what she had been told, no one in University Hill, or downtown, had to take this extra step.

Logically, the thought of it made a kind of sense. She remembered the Battle of the Glades, and what her sister had done before she escaped into Starling City’s moon-lit night. It had been her, not that turncoat Merlyn, who had triggered the earthquake. But it had been months of the finest seismologists and government agencies saying the Glades were secure, and could be rebuilt, only to see nothing change. In fact, as she was thinking of it, she realized that it had only gotten worse.

She had begun to ask questions publicly, and as a member of the Glades Chamber of Commerce, it had been obvious that she was being given the run-around. What was worse, and more personally offensive, was the fact that they were being deliberately obsequious about the whole thing. Why the cloak-and-dagger routine? This got her thinking, and it had her thinking for days. She had not been a member of the League of Assassins in good standing, and passed every course they had on detective work and investigations, to not know that there was a plot afoot.

That brought her to the business of her private life. The She-Wolf had not appeared in the nights of Starling City since the Adam Hunt takedown, and from the sources she had been beginning to cultivate, people believed she was a myth, a phantom. Yes, that had been her goal. What good was disappearing in the night if those people who operated in those shadows, relied on their quiet to do their evil deeds, did not think there was someone in those shadows who would strike back for justice and honor? But what she did not want was for the people of this neighborhood, the fishmongers, butchers, and service workers who were the city’s beating heart, to be harmed and believe no one would come for them. And while the Green Arrow and the Black Canary would deal with crimes of greed and passion, she would be what this neighborhood needed.

So, here and now, she made herself a promise. Let Oliver and Laurel deal with the ninja threat hanging over their heads. She would serve alongside her brother and sister when the time came. But for right now, someone was harming her staff, and the city she loved.

It was time for the She-Wolf to hunt. And she knew just where to get started.

**_Meanwhile, at Emerald City CrossFit in downtown Starling City……_ **

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(Laurel Lance’s POV)

There were things she could not work on in the bunker, Dinah Laurel Lance realized. That was a place to practice martial tactics, to study blueprints for buildings of those who abused their wives but had their crimes covered up by the indolence of high society, and to prepare to bring justice to those who thought their power and influence meant that they eluded it.

But, around them all, were ghosts. The ghosts of Al-Kanari, Al-Sahim, and Al-Shaytana walked around the place. They had built this with the idea of it being the sort of thing that would remind them of their safehouses in the League. To do that, they would have to make it a shooting range, a dojo for taekwondo, and an intelligence hub. It needed to be defined by what they had learned in Nanda Parbat, so the memories of it remained in the walls and the plumbing.

Furthermore, in there, they were vigilantes trying to become heroes. When they walked in the door, they were the Green Arrow, Black Canary, and She-Wolf. They had to be.

But here, in a place like this? She felt none of those ghosts, none of the responsibilities. Here, she could be Laurel Lance and let simpler goals guide her life. And one of those, if she could ever manage it, was to mourn her father. Because, and this shamed her to know it, she had not had the chance to since the Battle of the Glades.

It had been preparation for the battle, the battle itself, another battle at Oliver’s home, the return to Nanda Parbat, and then starting their new lives. She needed her time that was just for her, just for her to truly come to grips with the fact that her father was gone.

She could still hear his voice in the back of her head sometimes, the same way she knew Oliver heard his father and Nyssa heard her governess’s. When she needed advice, or some encouragement, his voice was what she heard. The most common thing she heard was a reminder to be strong for those who could not be, and to be a hero in the eyes of those who loved her.

She knew mom saw him as a lover, and a husband. But to her? He would always be the first man she ever loved, and someone who showed her what to EXPECT from a romantic partner besides. She knew he would be proud of her for becoming what she had, even if he also wished she had done it while being out of danger.

So, as she loaded her barbell and got to work doing her lifts, she kept saying “Thank you Dad” again and again, loud enough for her and, she hoped, him to hear.

**_At Dinah Drake-Lance’s home in North Starling City…._**

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It had been a long day, and Dinah Drake-Lance’s legs were reminding her of that fact. After studying, it had been a day of just throwing middle kicks and high kicks repeatedly. By the end of the day, it felt like she was going to need crutches.

But her daughters were coming over for dinner, and that felt just enough like normal that she had to get over how sore her legs were. Ted told her the soreness would fade with time. After all, as he said in his particularly understated way, “You haven’t thrown a kick in anger in decades. You’re going to be sore today. But I remember the Canary. Everyone in this city does. You’ll get back to that standard before too long.”

With all that was going on, all that had changed, family dinner was a welcome reminder of what her life would always be, at least a little. Sure, Laurel required halal meals now which took a bit more understanding but that would be ok.

There was one thing, though, and throughout the whole day it kept gnawing at her. It gnawed at her while she was having her coffee at her desk, grading papers. It got louder as she went to the only halal butcher shop in town and picked up the chicken for tonight’s meal.

Her baby girl was a murderer. It stung thinking, and it felt like hydrochloric acid to say in quiet moments when she was sure no one was around. Sure, she was proud of her daughter for surviving, and having come back to her life and her family. But still, her baby girl was a murderer. And the other was being trained by murderers. She did not know how she would deal with this, but she would have to.

Chopping onions and garlic as she let the chicken thaw, she suddenly heard the back door open. Putting down her all-purpose knife and going to wash her hands, as she didn’t particularly find hugging one of her girls while smelling like the vegetables she was going to use to make chicken arrabbiata, she suddenly felt a trickle of cold go down her spine as her danger instincts woke up. They had been slumbering for almost 3 decades, but they were still there. At this moment, she remembered that Laurel and Sara had agreed to come in through the front door. Finishing washing her hands, even whistling as she did so, Dinah Drake-Lance turned around and went face-to-face with someone in the black and white garb of the Black Spider Clan. Everyone in her orbit had trained her on what these ninjas looked like, so she knew this was not a coincidence. This was a fight for her life.

Almost immediately, on what she knew was muscle memory, she threw wild punches and kicks with as much force as she could muster. But just as quickly, she began to realize that she was tired and out of actual fighting practice. Perhaps, if she was younger and fitter, she’d be in better shape. Seeing the daggers the ninja was holding coming towards her, Dinah panicked and screamed.

At that moment the ninja flew backwards and hit the back of their head against the wall, collapsing to the floor in sections as blood poured from the back of their head.

Dinah Drake-Lance had killed someone. What would come next?


	16. And Another Road Starts

It had always been a struggle for the Lances who were left in the wake of Detective Quentin Lance’s death to come to grips with the idea that his need to see justice done, to make sure that families who were in the grip of drug addiction, ended up causing the Battle of the Glades that changed their whole lives. They supposed he would have found some justification in it, but they hated that it had cost him his life.

But, by a country mile, the person who had the toughest time with it was the person who they affectionately called “Canary Version 1”, Dinah Drake-Lance. After all, she had lost her husband, the father of her daughters, and the love of her life. It took her a while, and lots of therapy, but she got over it. At first, though, that was an entirely different matter.

**_At Dinah Drake-Lance’s home in North Starling City……._ **

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(Dinah Drake-Lance’s POV)

She was a murderer. That was the only thought that kept rolling through her mind as the police came in and interviewed her about what happened, and then her girls came in right after. She had killed someone, a young girl loaded with tattoos who was a member of the Black Spider Clan. But that didn’t matter.

Soon, though, the numbness faded. And with it came anger. Not at Quentin. She had understood that when one marries a cop, there’s a very real chance that there’d be THAT case. Besides, how could she be mad at someone who was just trying to make sure the spectre of addiction wasn’t all over her city like it had been?

No, this Talia and Prometheus were the true source of their rage. And who were their enemies? The League of Assassins, generally, and her babies Laurel and Sara specifically.

So, when she saw Laurel, Dinah wheeled around on her eldest daughter and asked her the question that had been on her mind ever since she came back into her life.

“How could you allow yourself to be trained by murderers? How did you handle it?”

(Laurel Lance’s POV)

Well, here it was. For five years, as she mingled in high society and felt an ancient calling to provide justice to all those who did not have the money and resources to get it for themselves, she had prepared to answer this question. She hadn’t envisioned that her mother would be asking it, but here she found herself.

The distinction between killing and murder had been something Laurel had tried very hard to understand. It had taken many months of prayer, and many hours reading every martial text, to come up with an answer she could live with. And now, much like mastering a kata and then using it in real combat, she was prepared to give the answer she had trained herself to know.

“Mom, I was trained by killers. Sara was trained by killers. But Talia is a murderer, so is Prometheus, and whatever’s left of the Black Spider Clan. The difference is simple.

The League taught me to value life, to value what it could mean, and demand justice for those who did not have the ability to get it from the law. I did it so that hundreds, thousands, MILLIONS, would not live under the yoke of whoever’s life I was taking. But when I was expected to take a person’s life, I did it humanely. It was always in battle, always when it was noble and face-to-face. More to the point, it was done with a code. I made sure no one who ever met my blades, or my cry, suffered.

What Talia and her ilk do is not that. They sneak around, and leave their prey to suffer. I will see them pay for what they have done, but please do not compare me to them. They are dogs, cowards. I am a warrior” Laurel said, with justly earned pride in her voice. The League had made her honorable, taught her the value of it, and gave her the skills to defend it.

No one, not even her mother, would diminish what Nyssa, Slade, and Ra’s had done for her. She would not stand for it.

(Dinah Drake-Lance’s POV)

Just hearing that explanation, and the passion and pride that her daughter had when she gave it, made it clear. Even though she spoke better Arabic now than most people spoke English, and knew fighting styles Dinah never even heard the name of, this was still her baby girl. And just as clearly, it was clear.

If she wanted peace, and the chance to sleep at night without any nightmares, Prometheus and everyone associated with him would have to pay. They’d pay double. They’d pay through the nose. It was time to avenge her love.

**_Meanwhile, in Ho Chi Minh City…._ **

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(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

Since he first trained with the Black Spider Clan, Malcolm Merlyn had developed a danger sense that was second to none. It had served him well as he learned all the skills he needed to be Genshin’s most prized student, and later as he brought to justice all those who were blocking the way for the Undertaking, and the destruction of whatever husk remained of the Glades. It had been so long since he even thought of it, thought of what destroying his home would mean, that it took him a moment to remember the contingencies he had set up. Even though he knew the city was beloved by Oliver and Laurel, and he couldn’t harm them more than he could Thomas, it could very easily be made to look like poor governance if the Glades was proverbially strangled in its crib.

It was that highly developed sense of danger, though, that made him reach for the kunai he kept in the waistcoat of the hand-tailored suit he was wearing right now. Because, and this staggered him to know, somehow the Black Spider Clan had followed him here. He had always been taught the Clan’s persistence was its greatest weapon, and now he knew that for himself.

But what he also knew, and this he relied on as he prepared to make his exit, was that the Clan also lacked a certain subtlety, a FINESSE he found both professionally and personally off-putting. Lord knows, there were many times he had to spend his own time and resources to make sure the initiates under his personal command didn’t just charge into high-society functions and start garroting people. That brute-force method, though, served him well here. They would chase him, he knew that.

And so, as he got up from his chair and headed towards the high-end luxury automobile that he knew was waiting, nothing seemed out of place. And then, he saw HER.

(Talia Ducard’s POV)

This was entirely too easy. It had taken a few hours with a disgraced computer technician who was only all too happy to have her gambling debts paid off to determine that Malcolm Merlyn had used back-channels, and aliases given to him by the Black Spider Clan, to travel through Southeast Asia. The subjects of his travels, she did not quite understand. Nor, to be honest, did it matter.

She was going to revive his mentor, the man whose counsel and skills he sought to emulate. There was nothing, could be nothing, that he would want more than that.

So, when she saw him in that café in Ho Chi Minh City, she knew her play. Unlike that child Carter Bowen, who was easily drawn to her side with hints and the possibility of righteous revenge, Malcolm Merlyn was a man of wealth and taste. She could not expect him to do what she wanted with whispers and innuendo. That would be a foolish gambit, and beneath her skills.

So instead, she’d be direct. Knowing what a person wanted was always more vital than the little tricks on how to make them tell you.

(Malcolm Merlyn’s POV)

His katana was in his car, same with his yumi and his arrows. If he was going to kill her, like she deserved, it was going to come down to him and his hands. But she had to know he was going to do that didn’t she?

What did she want? And then he heard it.

“I can revive Genshin, bring him back to his rightful spot as the head of the Black Spider Clan”

(Talia Ducard’s POV)

She had NO INTENTION at all of doing such a thing. And if he was thinking clearly, Malcolm would have known she had no intentions of that. All she needed to complete the old rituals, to have the power she needed to make herself the queen of the world, was to have everyone who was there on the night of the Battle of the Glades watch, in slack-jawed horror, as she commanded an army of warriors from the dead and took the fight to Nanda Parbat. Clans would not matter then. With the League destroyed, no one could stop her.

“You have my sword, and my yumi, and my resources. Let us revive our leader” Malcolm said, and Talia smiled.

The road to utter world domination started here.


End file.
